Following up on last week’s post about DC/Vertigo’s Transmetropolitan, I decided to write about one of Vertigo’s newer, very popular books, the harrowing masterpiece about life during wartime: The DMZ.

DMZ is quite possibly the most frightening comic book out there for very unexpected reasons: There are no superpowers. There are no amazing sci-fi advancements in technology. No forays into the mystic realms, no aliens. Just a thoroughly haunting vision of the worst aspects of U.S. militarism taken to the worst case scenario:

A second American Civil War. The forces of the U.S. Military vs. a homegrown insurgency borne out of the disgust and outrage of an international War-with-no-end that was once quaintly referred to as The War on Terror.

What makes the heartbreakingly intelligent DMZ so frightening is that it could actually happen.

DMZ is a “Day After Tomorrow” storyline, meaning a fiction based on the actual current events going on in our lives today. If I had to guess the year that DMZ takes place, I would guess 2009.

DMZ is currently in its 4th story ARC, with the first two arcs already available in TPB: On the Ground and Body of a Journalist. In the pages of the 2nd story arc, we learn how this new war on our very streets happened:

“The Wars [ie: Iraq, Afganistan etc.] were a million miles away. We had troops in four separate conflicts in three different continents. . . I remember when the Free Armies formed a government in Helena. They spread out from there. No one could grasp how it could happen. . .

“They laughed at this idea of redneck armies in pick-up trucks. The laughing didn’t last long. Pilots weren’t about to bomb small-town America. It all happened so fast that the Pentagon didn’t have time to whip up a propaganda campaign to paint the Free Armies as traitors.

“There are no borders or front lines for this war. It’s completely unconventional. The Free States are an idea, not a geographic entity.”

So that’s how it happened. It started in the West, secretly moving its way across the nation so that by the time the over-extended, shell-shocked military made their way back home to fight against their own friends and brothers, it had reached the shores of New Jersey.

So the DMZ, the contested land between The Free States and the remains of The United States is, of course. . . Manhattan.

So DMZ is about life during wartime, but more specifically, its about journalism during wartime. Our narrator and protagnist is Matty Roth, na assistant to hotshot war journalist Viktor Ferguson who gets gunned down over “The DMZ”. Roth, who appears to be the only survivor, is now an extremely important commodity to the United States and soon, The Free States as well.

And in a “city” (though “territory” is a more likely term for it) in which anyone can be sniped down from any hidden gunman in any of the remaining buildings throughout the wartorn area, the most important commodity a person can have it seems is:

A Press jacket. Word of Roth’s presence spreads through the DMZ quickly. And in a divided America, with Manhattan as the fulcrum to a very, very weighted scale, the favor of the only independent journalist in the territory is very, very valuable.

To the thorough relief of the reader, Matty Roth (who looks like any other shaggy-maned, scruffy-bearded cutey-boy journalist in a black T-shirt and cargo shorts) is incorruptable. No matter how many times he stares down the barrel of a gun, (and nearly shits himself each time, like any of us would!) he refuses to let himself be used.

More often than not, he finds himself as a go-between for the U.S. forces (Which include his own military father, whom Matt despises for typical “life-during-wartime” reasons: His parents divorced for poilitical reasons), forces within the DMZ. (His friend Zee who works as an emergency paramedic, the little militias that control various neighborhoods, etc.) and the Free Armies who control the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel and try to use Matt to push their own agenda. 

And what does Matt want? Well, it seems that even he’s not sure. He’s pulled in so many directions, with so much subterfuge and so many hidden agendas, that most of the time he’s just trying to report the elusive truth while staying alive and doing whatever seems right is each circumstance.

Matt’s inclination toward heroism is never in doubt, but like any of us, he makes the wrong decisions and trusts the wrong people, and is often running all over the bombed out streets of Manhattan trying to undo the trouble that he helped facilitate. Which is one of the numerous aspects of what makes DMZ so brilliant. Through the fog of war, it’s nearly impossible to tell what the “right” thing is at the time. It’s a lot easier through the lense of history.

What also makes DMZ a thrill to read (especially for us New York-a-philes) is the streets we have come to know and love like the back of our hands transformed into an almost lawless survival-of-the-fittest society.

As New York (in the real world) becomes more and more of a massive outdoor shopping mall with luxury condos popping up like black-heads on the face of a fifteen year-old McDonalds fry-cook, there is a twisted thrill in seeing Manhattan even worse than it was in 1977. With the Thompkins Sq. militia lobbing mortars at Stuy-town and the Central Park Conservancy turning into a ghost-militia that protects the trees, animals, and grows bamboo as a cheap source of fuel for the winter.

And of course, out of this latest chapter in the unsinkable history of New York, comes a new culture of street art, street theater, at the most real, uncorrupted-by-corporate-interest urban culture that has possibly ever existed in New York’s near 400 year history. People are struggling to stay alive, but that doesn’t mean they’re not also handing out fliers for their next art-gallery showing.

DMZ might just possibly be the most serious, heart-breaking, realistic comic-book out there. And if you love New York, and fear what might happen to it if the warmongers of the country remain in power, then pick up the first two TPBs, and take a good, long look at your current living situation and the loved ones around you.

And consider what you just might be willing to do to protect it.