DMZ #59

Written by Brian Wood
Art by David Lapham

This issue finishes off the 'Collective Punishment' arc, which has consisted of one-off stories focusing on different inhabitants of New York as the American army rains down missiles on the city.  With this issue, we turn the camera back to Matty Roth, the usual main character of this title, as he holes up in a bomb shelter with a varied cross-section of the city's inhabitants.

Now, Matty has become an increasingly controversial person in the city, what with his involvement in Parco Delgado's mayoral regime, the fact that he procured a nuclear bomb for Parco, and was the person who set off the current hostilities by acting rashly.  He bribes his way into the shelter with the materials that Liberty News gave him, and proceeds to spend the night with this group of New Yorkers.  He meets a former Central Park ghost (they were a radical environmental militia), one of Parco's drivers, a deaf music student, and a rich jerk.  Basically, your typical crowd.

The issue has Matty being all introspective and navel-gazing again, which is what he really excels at, but it is a good issue none the less.  The ending is pretty poetic, and it is kind of nice to check in with Matty again, as much as I prefer the stories without him.

Part of what makes this issue interesting is Lapham's artwork.  He brings a different level of realism to peoples' expressions than regular artist Riccardo Burchielli brings to the table, and this helps to get a sense of the silent majority of rooms' feelings and opinions about Matty and their situation.  I know there's not much left to this series (and really, NY can't take much more), and I look forward to seeing how Wood is going to wrap this all up.