I review comics for a living. As a result, I tend to read a lot of books that, if given the choice, I would avoid completely. They are books that do nothing for me, and usually receive the harsh end of the review stick in my writing.

Not DMZ.

DMZ is a comic book that just finished this year, after a six-year, seventy-two issue run; it featured the hypothetical situation that a second American Civil War had turned the island of Manhattan into a no-man’s land. 

While two armies were fighting over the land, there were still people living in the burnt-out husk of a city. These people had not made it out with the initial evacuation, stayed because they wanted to, or moved in with some hope that they could exploit the situation for personal gain.

People ran restaurant greenhouses and opened boutiques stocked with clothes stolen from racks in abandoned apartments. They defended their turf with violence and guns, learning that sometimes it was safer to depend on themselves. They still managed to be artistic, self-sufficient, and have culture.

Our hero, Matty Roth, wanted none of that. He just wanted to be a journalist. He would spend the next few years of his life reporting on the DMZ, learning the ways of its people and chasing that story. Along the way, however, he fell. He fell hard. 

Matty was corrupted by the power he received from the one man he thought could help the DMZ, and eventually, it ruined him. He couldn’t turn back.

While reading this story, writer Brian Wood quickly became one of my favourites because of the way he managed to turn one-off characters into light bulbs that illuminated the whole picture of the DMZ. 

Through reading about a DJ who dodges minefields on his way to a club, or a forty-something graffiti artist who only viewed his final work while being detained in a military helicopter, I understood the heart and spirit of the city. I understood the people who didn’t want to give up. I understood the people who just wanted to be free.

And frankly, that ability to make one-shot characters with no lasting impact on the main plot important amazed me. Matty Roth would never run across them in real life, apart from a faux “New York Times” published in issue twelve. This issue really stuck with me due to its construction, art style and purpose.

The issue is constructed like a real booklet that outlines maps, neighborhoods, interviews, talking heads and concepts. Learning “the anatomy of a street battle” or learning that people who ventured into the Empire State Building were never heard from again added character to the city without explicitly devoting too much time to the specifics.

Instead, when Wood comes back to them, issues later, a light goes on in our head that says “Man, I read about them back then and they sounded cool - this is 100 times better!”

That takes talent - the ability to plant a seed of an idea in a reader’s brain, have them forget about it, then have it bloom brilliantly later. 

By the end of the story, I’m not just reading about the DJ, Random Fire, or the artist, Decade Later. I’m living with them. I’m sharing the same vegan restaurants, or dodging the bombs raining down from both sides.

I’m huddled in a subway tunnel with them with the vain hope that the fighting will stop, we’ll be able to go home, and everything will be alright in the DMZ.