Broken Frontier

Brian Wood’s tale of a journalist stranded in war torn New York City continues as Matty goes looking for more things to write home about.

After first getting stranded in New York City and watching all of his fellow travelers get shot, Matt had to grow up from uninterested intern to the only journalist to be in the war torn demilitarized zone. He got a quick introduction to the many sides of this war and decided that he would uphold his duty as a reporter and give the real story from inside the city. This issue sees him head into Central Park, or rather, what’s left of Central Park, to look into the urban legend of the "Ghosts." According to legend, the Ghosts are a group of former soldiers who have taken it upon themselves to act as assassins and make their home in Central Park. What he gets is another story that forces him to look deeper into what is right and wrong.

Brian Wood has become something of a darling of independent comics. His characters seem to stand out as incredibly real, even in situations that push to the extreme levels of the real world. In this, his first real, major work the first thing he did was to make New York City, perhaps the most famous city in the world and one known as an important place for heroes, into a war torn city. In doing this he, quite literally, brought the theme of war stories home, where it will hit the hardest. In the first arc he forced his protagonist to grow up. In this one, he shows exactly what a grown-up would do in this situation: live up to his responsibility. The dialogue is tight and true, even with such contrasting characters. It seems that no matter what type of character Wood is writing, he absolutely nails them. Likewise his pacing is brilliant, building proper momentum throughout the story and leading his reader into all of his important moments without any problems.

For his part in the creation of this story, Riccardo Burchielli handles himself nicely. Like other non-American artists (especially those at Vertigo), Burchielli is a gifted cartoonist with a more mature feel. Impressively, his facial expressions don’t seem to have much variation but can hit a wide range of emotions. His character designs are nearly perfect visual representations of the characters. And he is able to convey a great amount without overburdening the page with crowded details. His action scenes work well and his pacing matches Wood panel for panel. Oddly enough, the only pages that seem to stand out as inconsistent are the few pages done by Wood himself. Burchielli’s work leans more towards the iconic and Wood’s realism doesn’t quite fit. Thematically it makes sense with that portion of the story but one doesn’t gain too much from the switch.

Four issues in, this book has been brilliant. Wood has done everything to create a poignant story touching on all principles of war, both good and evil, without getting preachy at all. There is a great amount of potential in DMZ and no reason to believe it can’t or won’t live up to it.