Before reading this review, take a minute to read my review of the previous two trades, available at this link. As I explain there, this comic is one I really love, even though a war comic--depicting a second American Civil War taking place in the years after 9/11--doesn't really seem to be my cup of tea. However, Wood's excellent storytelling and Burchielli's gritty and intense artwork create a compelling and thought-provoking alternate reality, in a genre appropriately labeled "poli-fi" by the author of volume 12's introduction.
Volume 11 opens with Wood taking us back to the events that led up to the civil war, filling in some details I had always wondered about. Journalist Matty Roth is reunited with some old friends in the second half of the trade, and rumors of peace and a truce are flourishing. In Volume 12, Matty actively works to see those rumors come to fruition, tying together many storylines we've encountered throughout the 72-issue run. Sadly enough, volume 12 also marks the conclusion of this series. It's always disappointing to see the end of a good comic, but I also appreciate authors who have a sense of story and know when theirs has run its course. I'll be watching out for Wood's next project, and I look forward to dinging out what unexpected places he draws me into next.
In my entry for books 36-37, I declared my love for Brian Wood, and I mentioned his "short stories of identity-seeking teen and twentysomethings." This is that very series, although I now regret that description and all that it fails to capture. Indeed, the stories of Demo are not at all ordinary, as this description makes them seem, and the series is unusual in itself in that it does not follow a storyline or have repeating characters. Instead, each issue of the series is a stand-alone story, connected by a common thread of human frailty and accomplishment--complimented by the starkness of Cloonan's art.
The stories Wood tells are not often pretty, and Publishers Weekly (Marsh 2011) aptly describes the characters as "young mutants who are clearly not superheroes." One story's protagonist breathes underwater, another's OCD drives her to live her life on post-it notes, and a third features a cannibal. The lives that these seemingly extraordinary people live are strangely normal, almost as if their unattractive/unusual traits are manifestations of common societal fears and shortcomings. The overall affect is disturbing yet compelling, depressing yet hopeful. Wood has a way of allowing us to explore the bizarre in a comfortable setting so that we almost question the society the characters (and we) live in rather than their actions. It's compelling, strange stuff.
When I attended Comic Con for the first time in 2007, I bought my first DMZ trade so I could get it signed by Brian Wood. My sister Sarah was a Wood fan, so I decided to become one on the spot. Since we have pretty similar taste in other literature, it makes sense that the same is true of the comic medium as well. It's good that I had Sarah as a guide, because at first glance it's not really my thing--DMZ stands for DeMilitarized Zone, after all--but Wood is one of the best comic authors around today, and his tale of Manhattan being caught in the crossfires of a second American Civil War is both horrifying and compelling.
The premise of this series is a war between the Free States (a coalition of anti-establishment militias whose numbers swell as the US attends to overseas wars), holding New Jersey and the inland, and The United States, stationed in the boroughs. Enter Matty Roth, a young man who uses his parents' connections to get attached to a famous journalist as a phototech. It's no real spoiler to tell you that the insertion of this press team goes awry immediately, leaving Matty as the only living member of the team, as it happens in the first or second issues of the series. Rather than leave the DMZ, Matty decides to stay and report from the inside, becoming the voice of the people who remain. It's a rough and desperate world, where people fight to survive and hold power, in both barbaric and heroic fashion.
I'm not going to catch you up on the whole series, leaving that pleasure up to you, but suffice it to say that Matty ends up as both hero and savage in varying episodes, witnessing the harshness and kindness of the DMZ's citizens. Volume 9 of DMZ charts Matty's actions as he contemplates his need to atone for his role in events which heightened unrest among DMZ citizens after a period of relative peace (for which he was also partly responsible). Volume 10 continues Matty's quest for atonement, while also sharing the stories of a variety of DMZ residents--mothers hiding with children, the boss of Chinatown, an army infiltrator working to fit in with the local populace--all while under a continuous onslaught of bombs from the US.
Each time I pick up a DMZ trade, I reflect on the war theme and wonder, "Is this really for me?" Yet, again and again I find myself drawn into the gritty world imagined by Wood and illustrated by Riccardo Burchielli (and others). Having read Wood's other work--which runs the gamut from short stories of identity-seeking teen and twentysomethings in Demo to big, hairy Vikings in Northlander--I can recognize that his writing is one of the main reasons I like a comic series on modern (if imagined) warfare. I simply admire all of his work--including his regular tweets about NYC (where he lives), his interests, and his three-year-old daughter and her famously mismatched outfits.
