I’ve been in a big nostalgia hole for the first half of this year, delving back into games, comics and movies I loved as a teenager. Re-experiencing them and re-evaluating my relationship with them.
The prompt to revisit the 2005 comic was the 2024 movie “Civil War” popping up across my various digital timelines. A fractious USA devolving into civil war told through the eyes of a photo journalist dealing with themes of objectivity and intervention, haven’t I seen this before?

My main memory of DMZ was its cut and paste rough art style. I was so enamored with that particular style of grunge artwork in my teens I remember using panels from DMZ in my GCSE Graphics coursework “inspiration” section. It was a particularly 2000s aesthetic, lots of templates, rough -, and imagery enabled by the explosion of software like Photoshop at the time.

Story wise I vaguely remembered it being about a journalist dropped into New York city, the titular De-Militarised Zone, finding a life and a vocation in the war torn city. As a teenager living in a sleepy English town I was mostly enamoured by the idea of a big city and that a person could spend their life taking photographs, the “war-ness” of it was a peripheral part of my memory.

As a kid I only ever had the first 2 or 3 trade paperbacks of the series, covering maybe 10-15 issues. So picking up this compendium covering a whopping 36 issues felt very indulgent.

The most dated part of the comic is really the technology. Matty Roth is stranded in New York City after being just a lowly intern on a journalist expedition with a famed reporter. He is the only survivor of an immediate ambush, meaning he’s the last employee they have in the city, however it’s the fact he has a “full broadcast suite” which is why they keep him employed, despite having no professional experience.

These days everyone in Manhattan would have a smartphone, but in 2005 the DSLR and the satellite transmitter held a far greater power over the average citizen.

The motivation of him staying in the war zone and reporting is a little thinly baked and comes across as very “I’m doing this because if I don’t there isn’t a story” kinda vibes. And in general the central character is the weakest part of this whole experience. He fits into the same vein of “wow what a cool kick ass dude with no training that the audience of blokes can just project themselves into” characters as Yorrick in Y the Last Man. It’s very much a trope of the 2000s in non-super hero comics.

The comic is at its best when it’s fleshing out the best character of the series; the City. Going into the details of how New York is surviving through the war. The friendly fire storyline is the best for this. It digs into what the beginnings of the war were like, how people took sides, how human different individuals in the conflict are. All generally digging into how horrible war is.

The anti-establishment themes of the series have all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, but I enjoy them none-the-less. There is era typical sexism and racism aplenty with a dash of homophobia on top.

I can’t really recommend this to anyone since my main joy of reading it came from rediscovering an influence on my teenage self. There’s a second volume compendium that I will get round to reading at some point in the future completeness, but for now I’ve dropped it to the back of my to read pile.

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