Theron Reads Comics: dmz

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Friday, July 29, 2022

A Close Look at DMZ Part 11: Matty Comes First

"The Island", despite how tonally different it feels, serves a valuable service: it allows the series to time jump the two months between Parco Delgado being elected and taking office without having to find something for Matty to do in Manhattan during that period of limbo. When Matty returns following his absence he's confronted with a new status quo. As with the first story arc of the series, Matty takes us on a journey that shows us the changes. And there are a lot of changes.

The following contains spoilers for DMZ 37-40.

A Close Look at DMZ Part 10: The Forgotten Borough

"Suppose they gave a war and nobody came?"

As antiwar slogans go that's a good one--and a compelling idea. Leaders declare wars and leave the fighting of them to ordinary people who had no say in the starting of them. History offers a few occasions where the rank and file tried something like this, one of better examples being 1914's Christmas Truce during World War I. Obviously this isn't appropriate for every war; German and French soldiers breaking bread during World War II is impossible to imagine. But a lot of wars (maybe most wars?) are not existential. So what if the conflict in the DMZ is just such a war?

The following contains spoilers for DMZ 35-36.

I've repeatedly raised questions about how the DMZ is administered. From what we know of the early days of the fight for Manhattan neither side claimed significant territory. The United States and Trustwell conduct a lot of overt activities in the city (and the Free States many covert ones), but for all that interference in this unclaimed territory there doesn't seem to be any real administration or aid. "Blood in the Game" addresses that topic by holding the first election in the DMZ.

"Blood in the Game" doesn't address what's been going on in the DMZ up until now (there's mention of a U.S. envoy administering it but according to Matty he's never even been in the DMZ). These details ultimately aren't relevant to the story, and without a viewpoint character to connect with from that time it wouldn't have much emotional resonance. The advantage of this lack of government is that we get a story that proves to be a major turning point for Matty and the series as a whole.

The following contains spoilers for DMZ 29-34.

I've claimed several times in previous posts that DMZ is a series about characters in war rather than a series about the war itself. But we've really only had a handful of characters to look at: Matty and Zee primarily with Wilson and Kelly on the periphery and Amina and Soames making contributions before never being seen again. So everyone reading could be forgiven for disbelieving my claim.

Series creator and writer Brian Wood followed up "Friendly Fire", the heaviest story to this point, with the breath of fresh air that is these six character examination issues. Don't let that turn of phrase fool you, though. While these issues do step away from Matty, Zee, and their never ending quest to find meaning and justice in a war zone, they have no less depth. Art, poverty, greed, emotional detachment, culture, spiritual transformation--they're all here, playing out in a war zone. And removed from Matty (mostly), these stories can be told without having to advance a larger narrative of how the DMZ is being changed by the presence of the ersatz journalist main character.

The following contains spoilers for DMZ 23-28.

The term "friendly fire" is terribly antiseptic. It has the sound of something small scale and not lethal. The term can actually encompass anything from confusion on the ground to air and missile strikes and it definitely includes fatal incidents. The casualties might be military personnel. They might be peaceful civilians, perhaps civilians under that military's protection. And the unfortunate truth is they happen in every war. Given this, any extended story about a war would be remiss if it failed to address the topic, and that brings us to this story.

The Iraq and Afghanistan wars saw their share of friendly fire casualties. Some were American soldiers. Some were Iraqi and Afghan soldiers. Some were civilians. One of the more notorious incidents was the Haditha Massacre. Brian Wood has spoken about how the coverage of that event, specifically the media's treatment of the soldiers involved, led to him changing this story to examine how soldiers put into impossible situations might make a mistake and then be hung out to dry by those higher in the chain of command.

The following contains spoilers for DMZ 18-22.

Remember when I said at the beginning that DMZ doesn't shy away from arguing a viewpoint? There's probably no better example in the series than how Brian Wood depicts the fictional company Trustwell, an entity that is an amalgamation of multinational corporations and military contractors. Both kinds of entities were often subjects of Iraq War discourse as the United States' nation building efforts stretched on.

Frequently talked about in the years preceding DMZ's publication was Halburton, an oil services company that received lucrative contracts and "sweetheart" deals, and whose former CEO was the sitting vice president, Dick Cheney. Haliburton, of course, was hardly the only American corporation profiting off efforts to rebuild Iraq. And reconstruction efforts weren't the only thing enriching American companies.

Military contractors were a significant part of the United States' presence in Iraq. In 2007 the Defense Depart concluded that almost 160,000 private contractors were employed in Iraq (roughly equal to the number of U.S. troops in the country at the time). With American military forces in both Afghanistan and Iraq it was necessary to supplement their numbers. In 2007, several months after this story arc was published, the military contractor Blackwater was involved in an incident that became known as the Nisour Square Massacre.

Given all that, it makes for these subjects to be explored in the series. And it's not really inappropriate to make an unambiguous judgment about them. At a certain point, though, criticism becomes farce.

The following contains spoilers for DMZ 13-17.

I've said from the start that DMZ is a series about characters more than anything else, and the ten issues we've looked at so far have certainly borne that out. But the city itself, a character in its own right, remains vague and somewhat undefined beyond knowing that it's a very dangerous place with some rooftop cafes. No matter how dangerous the city is, though, it's still home to hundreds of thousands of people so it's certain to have a rich culture despite the harsh environment. While it is likely to retain some of the sensibilities of Manhattan life before the war, there are of course newly evolved differences. As for those old Manhattan sensibilities, we know really nothing about what the city was like in the days and weeks leading up to the city's evacuation or, for that matter, the evacuation itself. Not surprisingly, some of this information is also communicated via character development.

Following "Body of a Journalist" the series gives us two stand-alone stories--sort of. The first of these is also the first issue not told from Matty's point of view. "Zee, NYC" is a flashback issue that introduces us to the person Zee was before Manhattan was the DMZ. The second issue is a unique entry in the series. It is told from Matty's point of view but is basically a guidebook for the DMZ.

The following will contain spoilers for DMZ 11-12.

Despite his living in a warzone, what we've seen of Matty Roth's life hasn't been that bad. He has been in danger, even mortal danger, but that doesn't differentiate him from most of the DMZ's residents. So far in Matty's short stay he's been able to do the work he stayed in the DMZ to do, and he's made friends, or at the very least companionable associates, along the way. But being a somewhat public figure in an ungoverned territory dominated by disparate factions and sandwiched between two hostile armies pretty much guarantees that even that limited amount of freedom and autonomy was in danger of being hijacked at some point. And that's exactly what happens in the series' second multi-part story arc, "Body of a Journalist".

Five issues isn't much time to set a tone, but DMZ actually managed to do that with its opening issues. I talked about how chalk full of world building and ancillary character development the opening story arc "On the Ground" was. When Matty chooses to stay in the DMZ at the end of issue three we have a little bit of an expectation of what he's in for and what he's set out to accomplish. "Ghosts" is an excellent follow-up where we get to see Matty actually trying to be the journalist he agreed to try to be. And while "Crosstown" doesn't really advance the journalism idea, it almost suggests that the series could just be Matty's ongoing adventures in the DMZ, exploring the warzone without significantly influencing it--kind of a travelogue. "Body of a Journalist" arrives at the perfect time to declare that no, Matty Roth is probably going to be a big deal in the DMZ.

The following will contain spoilers for DMZ 6-10.

DMZ starts off with a bang in "On the Ground." It doesn't happen through big action set pieces and explosions (though part 3 certainly has those), but rather by packing rich, intense character development and world building into every panel. No moment is wasted, and it makes an impression on the reader that all but demands the series be added to pull lists. There is, though, a drawback to this intensity.

The first three issues of DMZ really never lets Matty stop and rest. If he's not avoiding getting shot, he's being dragged from one part of the city to another by Zee, who is busy telling him that everyone outside the DMZ has wrong ideas about what goes on inside it. A byproduct of this pacing is that the reader really never gets to catch their breath--never really gets to think about what's going on. The counterpoint of issues four and five, then, are a welcome shift.

The following will contain spoilers for DMZ 4-5.

Maybe the most important thing to accomplish in the beginning of any story is establishing the world in which it takes place. For something set in a world that's basically contemporary Earth with nothing supernatural or superpowered going on, that's fairly easy. The further you get from the everyday, though, the more complicated this can be. Then the question becomes how to do it. Some stories take a lot of time in the beginning to establish characters' surroundings and larger world, laying the ground work for when the reader finally encounters these things down the road. The other option is to drop the reader into a world and have them rely on context clues and snippets of information provided by characters and events to discover what's going on. It's this second option, arguably the riskier, that Brian Wood chose when he wrote DMZ.

The following will contain spoilers for DMZ 1-3.

An unfortunate and too common misconception about comics, even by some readers, is that they are relatively shallow entertainment. They may be able to tell intricate, longform stories but in the end they have no greater meaning (nor should they). Except one really doesn't have to go far to see how wrong that is. Even the bright, exciting world of superher0 comics is full of examples of these stories. And while there are those who believe this a relatively new phenomenon because some current series, such as Superman Son of Kal-El, are more overt with their larger message, the truth is that this has been going on pretty much since the beginning of the genre. Two obvious examples are X-Men, a series that has long used metaphor to comment on civil rights issues, and the character Captain America who represents the spirit and ideal of the United States and who has often come into conflict with the nation's government when it did not live up to its espoused principles. So if superhero books with their fun, exciting, larger than life stories can tread into social commentary and critique, imagine what series outside that genre can do.

IIn 2005 DC Comics' imprint Vertigo began publishing a series called DMZ. At the time of the series' launch George W. Bush was president, the Iraq had grown unpopular, 9/11 and the threat of terrorism still held sway in the public consciousness, and the country had traded away certain civil liberties in the name of security. DMZ was an unapologetically political series. Among the topics its stories commented on were the military, the media, extreme jingoistic patriotism, terrorism, art, and business corruption. And lest someone think a comic addressing these kinds of real world issues can't last, it's important to point out that DMZ ran for 72 issues from 2005 to 2012.

The series takes place in a vague near future during a second United States civil war. Though there are context clues that can place it roughly within certain years, there are very few topical references and none of them interfere with the storytelling. The themes that the series addresses are, for the most part, just as relevant today as they were when DMZ was originally published. And it's likely they will remain relevant for many years to come.

DMZ's setting is the island of Manhattan, the titular DMZ sandwiched between territory occupied by the Free States and territory still held by the United States. Though the series will offer some nuggets about the larger war and its origins, it is mostly unconcerned with those specifics. Series creator and writer Brian Wood has spoken on how he didn't develop the larger world in significant detail. This does lend a dubious quality to some aspects of the underlying premise, but for the most part they are unimportant because the series isn't about the war. Instead it's about the DMZ residents who are in many ways people without a country. The series' stories are about how these people live, what kind of culture they develop, how they try and organize their own government, and what kind of pressure they face from two warring factions who don't seem to give a damn about them.

Brian Wood doesn't pull any punches with his commentary. Rather than presenting unanswered questions to be pondered, most of the stories have a definite point of view, and that kind of confrontational presentation still invites the reader to consider the value of those opinions and whether they help or hurt the narrative.

DMZ was written by Brian Wood who also handled the art for many of the series' covers. The vast majority of the interior art was handled by Riccardo Burchielli.

The posts for this analysis will group multiple issues together, either as full story arcs or collections of one-and-done issues. It goes without saying that the series will be spoiled. Additionally, some posts will be on the lengthy side as I look to examine the political themes and how they related to the world as it was when the series was published as well as how it relates to today.

You can jump to the individual posts with the links below, and for brief issue-by-issue commentary check out Twitter @theronscomics #BWRBDMZ.

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Dropping in on the DMZ

Index

Part 2: Dropping in on the DMZ

Part 3: Press Pass

Part 4: The Matty - Free States Meet Cute

Part 5: New York - Then and Now

Part 6: Blackwater Meets Haliburton Meets Evil Without Nuance

Part 7: Who's to Blame?

Part 8: A Cast of Severa l

Part 9: Democracy in Action