DMZ, Vol. 1: On the Ground
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DMZ, Vol. 1: On the Ground (DMZ #1)

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3.94 of 5 stars 3.94  ·  rating details  ·  2,176 ratings  ·  175 reviews
From indie comics icon Brian Wood (Demo, Channel Zero, GLOBAL FREQUENCY) and up-and-coming Italian artist Riccardo Burchielli (John Doe) comes the first volume of DMZ, collecting the first 5 issues of the series about the ultimate embedded war journalist trapped in a most unlikely war zone: the streets of New York City.

In the near future, America's worst nightm...more
Paperback, 128 pages
Published June 7th 2006 by Vertigo
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Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 3,052)
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Felicia
Felicia rated it 5 of 5 stars
Shelves: graphic-novels
Ok, I dunno if this was the tipping point in my education, but this was the FIRST graphic novel that actually sucked me in similar to how I immerse myself in novels. I really think it was the art that instantly hooked me. I am relieved, because I thought I would never "GET" graphic novels, but this one I HAD to know what was gonna happen next, I really was interested in the characters (and cared about them for once) and the world really drew me in. I love loved it, and I will be ins...more
Erik
Erik rated it 5 of 5 stars
Imagine the United States loses the majority of the continental US after a brutal Second American Civil War, with the remaining land of Long Island, Brooklyn, and Queens making up what’s left of the Stars and Stripes, the inland to the West (starting with New Jersey) taken over by the Free States, and Manhattan Island being a gang/tribe-infested no-man’s-land referred to as the DMZ. The latter being the setting in which photojournalist intern Matthew (Matty) Roth is dropped after an assignment g...more
Michael
Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars
Shelves: comics
What a great concept - something right out of a movie John Carpenter should have made. DMZ is ongoing series about life on Manhattan island during the second Civil War - this one a battle between the Free States (everything from New Jersey inland) and the United States (now just Brooklyn, Queens, and the rest of Long Island).

This is story of Matty Roth, a kid with connections in the still strong US media, getting a job as a cameraman for a Pulitzer prize winning journalist. Matty i...more
Adam
Adam rated it 2 of 5 stars
Shelves: comics
This was OK, but based on all the rave reviews I was expecting something more. I like the basic concept of DMZ, and will probably continue to read more of it, even though I wasn't crazy about the first volume (which comprises the first five issues of the DC/Vertigo series).

DMZ takes place in Manhattan in a near future in which Middle America (a.k.a. "The Free States") has declared war on the rest of the country (a.k.a. "The United States of America") and pushed ea...more
Monk
Monk rated it 4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for: Anyone
Shelves: required_reading
Dan recommended this book to me out of the blue sometime last year and I picked it up on the strength of said recommendation. I have not regretted it.

It's set at a time in the near future and while we were playing in the sand in the Middle East with all our forces deployed, the country experiences civil war. Fundamentalist/survivalist types form a militia that starts in the middle of the country and pushes out to both coasts. There are pockets of the old guard left though and there i...more
Joseph
Joseph rated it 1 of 5 stars
Recommends it for: Comics-fans and News-junkies
Given away (to Craig?)

I picked up this book (and the second volume) based on reading a couple very positive reviews, but when push comes to shove, I'm not too terribly impressed with it.

It's a neat idea, certainly. America is in the midst of its second civil war, and New York is right on the dividing line between the federal government and the Free States movement, with Manhattan serving as the titular demilitarized zone. But despite the many glowing reviews from a variety ...more
Chris X
Chris X rated it 4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for: josh
a good read,

The main character, a whiny rich kid reporter wanna be, was not so sympathetic to my tastes. But the characters and sitiautions he encounters are excellent. And the concept of Manhattan as a DMZ zone between 2 warring versions of the Divided States, is great. Main character may evolve into a likable one as this is only volume One.

Deals a lot with the ignorance of what warfare means for the citizens caught up in the battles. Battles they may not have an int...more
Alan
The series illustrates (literally I guess) the power and relevance of the graphic novel. The set-up is that while the US military is occupied overseas, anti-establishment militias in the mid-west rise up to form an army that sweeps east, finally hitting a stalemate at the Hudson River. Manhattan Island forms a demilitarized zone between the opposing forces. This may have seemed far fetched a few years ago when the series began, but given the rise of scary right-wing populism these days, with peo...more
Travis
Travis rated it 5 of 5 stars
Shelves: graphicnovels
America's next Civil War in bold across the back cover of the book gives a short rendition of what DMZ is about.

I discovered Brian Wood in late 2005 with his series DEMO. I wanted something off the mainstream and I found a couple issues of DEMO, the first issue and the break-up issue, and after that I was hooked. I collected all the DEMO issues and started to find some of his earlier works. So, when DMZ broke around November-ish of 2006 I jumped all over it. It's been cool watchi...more
Kenyon
Kenyon rated it 5 of 5 stars
Graphic novels aren't considered art by many. People think of cheap comic books they read as kids, and fail to see the ability to tell complex, arching stories in the medium. Alan Moore is a visionary in the realm of storytelling, but his genius has gone largely unnoticed by the public, his only recognition being gained by lackluster film adaptions to his work.

DMZ, written by Brian Wood, is one of the most fascinating works of entertainment in recent memory, be it literature, film, o...more
Scott Foley
I picked this up on a whim while visiting my local library and DMZ: On The Ground grabbed me by the jugular and wouldn't let go within two pages.

Even though the premise of DMZ has been done before, author Brian Wood delivered his take on a second American civil war with such adrenaline and ferocity that it is unlike any of its thematic predecessors.

The idea is that because our armies our stretched so thinly overseas, radical militias within the heartland separate from the USA...more
Chris
Chris rated it 4 of 5 stars
Shelves: graphicnovels, 2011
Written by Brian Wood, DMZ takes place on the island of Manhattan during the second American civil war in the near future. Photojournalist Matty Roth finds himself in the Manhattan demilitarized zone and begins to investigate the new landscape of New York City.

The gritty, angular artwork from Riccardo Burchielli sets the tone for this first trade. Burchielli's blunt pencils bring home the grimness of a war-torn Big Apple, while at the same time wonderfully capturing the character momen...more
Sam Quixote
America goes through another civil war and the line is drawn on the Eastern seaboard, the de-militarised zone is the island of Manhattan. Matty Roth, an intern for a popular news outlet, is sent to the DMZ to assist the seasoned reporters collect stories but his group are ambushed and he finds himself the sole survivor. He decides to stay and do what he can in documenting the lives of the surviving peoples on Manhattan. Welcome to DMZ.

I think Vertigo put out the best comics series out...more
Ryan
Ryan rated it 4 of 5 stars
The story: America's Second Civil War, between the "official" USA government and an uprising of militia groups and other insurgents organized into an army of Free States. The island of Manhattan has become a demilitarized zone, a war-torn area neither side can hold and that has been turned into an American Afghanistan, Somalia, or Gaza Strip -- those that live there fend for themselves against each other and against the two sides that treat it roughly as a no-man's land. A journalism s...more
Dufour
Dufour rated it 5 of 5 stars
Shelves: graphic-novels
Probably one of the most surprisingly awesome reads I've stumbled across in quite some time. I've avoided Brian Wood like the plague due to his prior association with AiT/Planet Lar, and when Vertigo began printing DMZ ongoing, I didn't give it a second thought. Thankfully some friends gave a pile of these trades to read during some sick time and I finally got around to leafing through. And lemme tell ya-- they are COMPELLING.

The concept is brilliant from the get-go: America is undergo...more
Lobeck
Lobeck rated it 2 of 5 stars
Shelves: comics
This is terrible storytelling in a potentially intriguing setting. Matty's (main character) motivation for remaining in the demilitarized zone is not particularly believable, which creates a very basic and hard-to-ignore issue with the premise of the story. Worse yet, Matty's discoveries of what life is really like in the DMZ verge on glorification of war zones. He very quickly, and a little too easily, makes a friend who is willing to show him the ropes through hostile territory. In fact, a...more
E. Chris
E. Chris rated it 5 of 5 stars
Shelves: comic-books
A wonderful commentary on war. DMZ takes place during the second US Civil War. The Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), as is often the case, is a battleground between the two sides (the US Military and the Free States militia) in an attempt to control the middle ground. The DMZ, though, is Manhattan. And while most of the population has left (or been killed), many have not.

The story follows Matty. An young, apathetic photojournalist who finds himself stranded on the island after his assig...more
Josh
Josh rated it 5 of 5 stars
Maybe you need to live in a war zone to really get this. Or in a city/ghetto that's like a warzone.

Maybe you need to read it on a sunny day in Central Park, with the beautiful tourists walking past on their way to museums, hair appointments, and UES apartments.

Or maybe none of these things apply. But this graphic novel seriously got under my skin.

Brian Wood really makes you ponder the thin lines between privileged peace and chaotic violence -- these are lines th...more
Jim Black
This is the first time I have read any of Brian Wood's work. It won't be the last.

Wood has mastered how to set up a new series. The reader is introduced to the new status quote in short order. Wood is able to pull you into this new world and make it seem very realistic. In addition to establishing the environment, he does a very good job with the characterization. The various characters seem like people you know. They might act differently than the average person in our world b...more
Ren the Unclean
This seems like it will be a cool series. It is basically a collection of shorts following a photojournalist who is dropped into a war-torn New York in the near future. It is an interesting setting, as long as you don't think too carefully about the logic behind it, though requiring a certain amount of credulity on the part of the reader does detract somewhat.

The first story just sort of establishes the situation and sets up how Matty ended up there to begin with, and the rest are ...more
Sarah
Sarah rated it 2 of 5 stars
I picked this up to pre-read to check for appropriateness for my 9-year-old, since it looked like the themes would be right up his alley. It has a neat dystopian concept (Manhattan as a war zone between mainland US and Long Island) and interesting urban survivalism ideas (including the environmentalists who literally buried the Central Park zoo to protect it from scavengers). The art was quite good and I imagine that if I knew Manhattan I'd like it even better. Unfortunately, the story is handle...more
Thomas Litchford
This is the first comic/graphic novel I've read in a long time, and it's really good. Added bonus: I got it from the library. It was the expensiveness of comics that kept me away from them post-high school ($15-20 for something I'm going to read in an afternoon?). Yay libraries!

The other thing that kept me from comics was a seeming lack of grown up subject matter. DMZ is definitely for grown ups. It looks at serious, relevant themes, and it tells the truth.

Very quickly, the i...more
Raina
This is such an amazing concept. Brian Wood imagines a world where Manhattan is a demilitarized zone in a war between New Jersey (and the rest of the states) and Long Island and the other NY boroughs, which still hold the "United States" name.

Maybe because I just finished To Afghanistan and Back, this felt like an alternate history far too close.

What if a civil war had erupted post-9/11?

What if we were a war zone, like Bosnia, and other areas ...more
Loyd
Loyd rated it 4 of 5 stars
Shelves: graphic-novels
Is it just me, or are the most interesting ideas for long-form stories all happening in graphic novels these days? DMZ is an engrossing, gritty take on our military excursions overseas, transplanted to a Blade Runner-style Manhattan. It has elements of Mad Max, Escape From New York (minus Snake Plissken) and the a dash of Streets of Fire and The Warriors thrown in. But it also has a big chunk of Max Headroom by way of Network, too, and that's where the fun begins (not that this is a "funny"...more
Jessica
Jessica rated it 5 of 5 stars
Recommended to Jessica by: Mike
Excellent. So good, in fact, that I almost didn't go back to work from my lunch hour. Been a long time since i've considered faking a flat tire for a book. ;) An excellent story, set in Manhattan of the future, when there is a civil war going on, and a young journalism intern is left behind in the dmz. I can't wait to read the next volume! Great art, fantastic story.
Trevor
Manhattan, New York. The DMZ.

The Second Civil War has broken out with New Jersey and the inland states making up the Free Army and Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island forming the United States of America. In this graphic novel, you follow Matty Roth, a photography intern for Liberty News as he ventures into the DMZ island of Manhattan. No man's land. The moment he sets foot on the ground, things go wrong and Matty finds himself trying to survive and broadcast news stories about life in...more
Andrew
Andrew rated it 2 of 5 stars
Shelves: comics, vertigo
Awesome concept meets appallingly bad execution. Five years into the Second American Civil War, a ceasefire is reached between the Free States and the U.S. Government, with Manhattan serving as an unstable Demilitarized Zone/No Man's Land. The story follows an embedded journalist who travels to the DMZ to learn about life there among those left behind. The stage is set for lots of stylized action, improbably attired female characters, and ridiculously obvious parallels to Hurricane Katrina and...more
James
Vivid and expansively imagined, and it shows some solid research. I do wish that the authors had worked in more background information about the story, about what happened to give rise to the situation in which it's set. Maybe that will come in future volumes in the series.
Ryan
Ryan rated it 4 of 5 stars
Shelves: graphic-novels
First volume in a series about a reporter on the ground in the demilitarized zone that is Manhattan, during America's second civil war. I've always loved the city of New York, so it's a little hard to see it torn to pieces in the chaos and anarchy that follows the pull-out, but it's also the perfect place for a series like this.

One of the things that I liked about this is that, unlike most dystopian stories, this one involves people being resourceful, and rebuilding after the govern...more
Caroline
Caroline rated it 3 of 5 stars
Shelves: comics
I really like the concept of this book -- urban warfare comes to America, and Manhattan is the DMZ of a new civil war.

In practice, I found it hard to get a handle on the characters and situation in this first volume. I'm also not wild about the art -- not that it's bad, just a taste thing I guess. Mostly I'm frustrated by not really understanding the external political situation that has led to this. And it's not a point-of-view thing; there are characters in a position to under...more
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