A barely disguised rant about Blackwater. Matty is so buff and hardcore! He has sex with teenaged Arabs! He stands up to torture for days! Everyone thinks he is the coolest thing ever! This is racist, sexist, Islamophobic trash, and it should never have been published. Brian Wood may mouth liberal sentiments about freedom, but his writing is pretty sick.

Read this in close proximity to Richard Kadrey's The Grand Dark. Both ask what it means to be in a war and whether it is possible to be neutral or not a part of it. Corey Doctorow states in the forward that there is a way for the non-combatants to maintain and use their own agency. I am not sure that this volume bears him out. I see what he is saying but it isn't as if the non-combatants had no impact on the war. It still affects one side or the other. There is still a larger game being played a...

This is a big step back for a series I was really starting to like. Brian Wood mines recent current events to try and squeeze a story about a Blackwater-like privateer called Trustwell into his series about a future American Civil War. Journalist Matty Roth goes undercover to infiltrate a terrorist cell and in turn exposes one of the most rickety, head-slapper plot contrivances I’ve come across in quite some time. It stretches the bounds of credulity (within the logical confines of this series)

This was definitely not quite a well-written as the previous two volumes of DMZ. Wood tackles the prevalance of corporate contractors in a war zone - specifically Trustwell Industries in Manhattan. Now, this is certainly a timely, pertinent subject for any exploration of war in the present, or the near future, as we've seen an enormous growth and exposure of the military-industrial complex. It's an important question to ask, which Wood does - who's running the war, the government who sponsors it...

Marty goes undercover to find out more about Trustwell, the company overseeing reconstruction of New York's most famous landmarks, and ends up joining a terrorist cell funded by TW and ruining someone's life by doing the right thing. Tense, thought-provoking installment in one of the best comic series I've ever read.

I don’t know, every single Brian Wood comic book seems to be about some kind of young, tough, sexy, street-smart hipster who looks very cool in a gritty world. Why the world is such a gritty place never seems to matter much, it’s just background designed to make our young hipster look as tough and sexy and cool as possible.In the case of DMZ, young, buff, independent hipster reporter Matty (who has sex with a sexy media chick named Zee) looks very tough and cool and sexy amidst the ruins of a ci...

For all the promise of Vol. I, Vol. III follows up to the disappointing closing issue of Vol. II exposing DMZ to be just another stupid run of the mill comic.The shortcomings are multiple so I’ll try to focus on the particularly glaring ones.First, Matty is a journalist but doesn’t seem to do his job. Quite un-jounrnalist-like, he never seems to write anything. Nor do we see him searching out the next big scoop. Compared to DMZ’s obvious forerunner TransMetropolitan, Spider Jerusalem looks like

This volume ups the action in the series, as Matty goes undercover with a Blackstone analog to attempt to uncover their corruption at a level that actually evokes a reaction. It's a tough read, with suicide bombers, assassination attempts, and some truly messed up allegiances that play out to a level that is horrifying, especially if one considers it might be based on reality. It also introduces some new characters, like Amina, who is a surprisingly nuanced character, contrary to her first appea...

DMZ finally picks up steam after two good, but not great volumes, I get one I really enjoy. Matty goes deep undercover to try and find out more information about a terriost group. This chapter gets pretty dark as he has to let terrible things happen to learn more. Betrayal, sex used as a weapon, beatings, and more all occurs here and it's probably one of the more uncomfortable volumes but that was the purpose of it. I actually enjoyed the plotting in this. Nothing over the top, and a little pred...

A blatantly corrupt Blackwater-esque corporation is given lucrative contracts by the blatantly corrupt US government to rebuild landmarks in Manhattan. Some locals, outraged at their brutal treatment by Blackwater's private soldiers, mount a suicide bombing campaign against the mercenary forces. Matty goes undercover as a construction worker and manages to get absorbed into a terror cell. The identities of the ultimate sponsors of the ongoing violence are of course shocking yet unsurprising.A so...

Starting a story is almost always the same: I take ideas for characters, stories, themes, and moments, and I write them down. I describe what the characters are thinking, how the unfolding plot affects them. I mark down a sequence of events, moving from one to the next, making sure each one is important, and that they all lead somewhere. I write up themes and philosophies, how they operate, and how the story relies on them.Then I sit back and sigh, because after all that work, I still haven't wr...

Ok, I love that I can find Vertigo volumes at my public library, because I read this entire five issue/chapter volume/installment in one night. The future world, a dystopia, created by Wood and artist Burchielli is dark and close to our own. In this volume, the protagonist does participant observation within a corrupt military contractor. It's ok, but tortured and melodramatic rather than journalistic. The color scheme, too, is dark, and prints a little too grey, with a lot of dirty black tones:...

This is the first volume with a really gripping storyline. While the first two volumes were (though still enjoyable) a bit of a bumpy ride to me, this volume is easily the best written until now. My library had only the first three volumes available when I got my last bulk, but after this one I am along for the ride (wasn't so sure after the first two books).

The story is jacked up here from the end of Volume 2. Trustwell (A stand-in for Blackwater) is introduced here, the private military company with high connections in the US government, is given the contract to clean-up the DMZ, under the supervision of a UN peacekeeping force. Trying to get a story on Trustwell and what's really going on, Matty finds himself working undercover for them and running into all kinds of shit: terror cells, bombings, more kidnapping, beatings, torture, further manipul...

Easily the weakest of the 3 volumes so far released. The previous 2 volumes were very good at trying to show what it must be like to live in no-man's land such as present-day Iraq through a gorgeous portrayal of a devastated New York. But here, the metaphor becomes too shrill. Don't get me wrong, I am the last person to defend the practices of military contractors such as Halliburton and Blackwater but their counterparts in "Public Works" were pure caricatures.

After the high of Vol 2, a little bit back to earth with this one.I think it tries to show how easy it would be for anywhere to become a Fallujah etc, trying to get across the mindset of those who would be labelled insurgents/terrorists.Not bad, but I just didn't feel much empathy for the new characters we were introduced to.

I'm bored of this series again. A lot of this got skimmed more than read and the art seems to getting sloppier. The setting of NY as a war-zone is still interesting, but fully fleshed out character here and there would be nice.

Didn't LOVE this one as much as the first two. Kinda so veiled with Blackwater, I felt like the analogy was a bit too on the nose. Still a fan.

The book has picked up a bit. There are double crosses and corporate espionage and the forging of friendships.The war is slowing down now but there are new things on the horizon.