Theron Couch
DMZ #1-5 posed many real world questions via its world and the circumstances its main character, Matty Roth, found himself in. Some of them were blunt. Others grew out of curiosity about this fictional world. DMZ #6-10, “Body of a Journalist” parts 1-5 is no different in some regard. But the stakes, both in the narrative and the themes involved, get much higher.
“Body of a Journalist” opens after a significant time jump from DMZ #5, “Crosstown”. The series moves from snowy winter to blistering summer. And it turns out that summer in the DMZ is always marked by an increase in violence.
“Body of a Journalist”
The story arc opens with a suicide bombing.
DMZ #6
Liberty News tries to convince Matty to come in so they can replace him with a veteran reporter, but Matty refuses insisting he is safe and has built up useful contacts. But for all his bluster, the DMZ is getting to him. After witnessing a random suicide bombing Matty reflects on how the horror of the environment is wearing on him. And this emotional weariness is unfolding at the same time that he’s dealing with a nasty infection—presumably a result of the city’s less than stellar sanitation.
Matty receives a call from the Commander of the Free States forces at the Lincoln Tunnel. He wants to sit with Matty for an interview. Matty agrees, arriving at a predetermined meeting spot only to be hustled into a car. The Commander isn’t interested in an interview. He needs Matty as a go-between with the United States because they want to ransom Viktor Ferguson, the reporter Matty entered the DMZ with who was presumed dead but was instead captured by the Free States.
DMZ #6
The Free States forces leave Matty to make his own way back across to the Brooklyn Bridge and United States territory. He’s debriefed by the United States military, Liberty News, and his father (a Liberty News big shot). They’ve confirmed what he told them about Viktor Ferguson’s capture. Deciding that Matty is in the best position to carry out the transaction, the military and Liberty agree to send Matty back into the DMZ over the elder Roth’s objections. Liberty sets him up with meds, new equipment, and a contract.
Back in the DMZ Matty’s friend Wilson checks out his equipment. The two men decide to toss it all for fear of it being bugged. Matty even decides his antibiotics could be bugged so he flushes them.
Matty returns to the Free States Commander the next day and conveys the Free States’ demands to the United States. The Free States want three minutes’ airtime on Liberty News, $120 million, and the United States to cede the entire western half of Manhattan. Matty already knows that won’t fly.
While Matty eats dinner with Zee that night, a news alert comes on announcing a new US offensive into the DMZ to rescue imprisoned journalist Viktor Ferguson and imperiled journalist Matty Roth. The next day Liberty News declares Viktor and Matty dead. The obvious remedy is for Matty to prove both he and Viktor are still alive. He crosses the island back to the Lincoln Tunnel only to discover that a spy in the Free States’ ranks set Viktor free. Matty and the Free States Commander pursue the fugitive reporter, afraid that if they can’t prove Viktor’s alive on their own terms the US will keep his survival a secret and continue the invasion. The two get within sight of Viktor only to see him get shot by a US soldier in a helicopter.
DMZ #9
Matty catches Viktor’s death on camera. But rather than broadcast the footage, he strikes a deal with the United States. Matty will sit on the footage if they cancel the invasion, cease bombing the DMZ, make public what truly happened to him and Viktor, and let Matty out of his contract with Liberty News. As insurance, Matty spreads the footage of Viktor all over the DMZ with different people he knows. The United States agrees to all terms, and the military pulls back.
Bogged Down Abroad
“Body of a Journalist” includes a lot of world building, mainly in developing the Free States’ origins and tactics. At one point in the story Matty comes across several old newspapers that detail the war’s origins. Readers are treated to a series of headlines as Matty reminisces about those early days.
DMZ #8
Through Matty’s examination of the newspapers we learn that the Free States grew out of an uprising in Montana which led to the creation of a separatist government in Helena. An army formed and steadily marched east, untouched until it neared the eastern seaboard. The series justifies this by saying that all the country’s military assets were abroad fighting various wars in multiple countries.
The idea that the United States would be spread too thin abroad as a result of foreign interventions was in the public consciousness when DMZ was written. It got a boost the year before in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when the federal government proved rather inept in handling the disaster. Indeed, when U2 and Green Day released a video for their cover of “The Saints are Coming” in 2006, it included footage positing an alternate scenario where United States troops in Iraq were redeployed to New Orleans to better handle the crisis. And given the aggressive anti-terror based foreign policy of the Bush administration (and congress’s tendency to be a rubber stamp at the time), it wasn’t impossible to envision continued military engagement in more countries.
This comment on the United States’ broader military strategy at that time is one of DMZ’s more subtle critiques. The series never argues that the country would have been better off in this alternate future if the military was stateside and in a position to eliminate the early dissent that gave rise to the Free States. Nor does it advance ideas of isolationism. But there is a sense in this backstory that the nation’s continued conquest abroad slowly damaged the country as time went on. The Free States could be seen as a kind of cancer that the country waited too long to diagnose and no longer had the strength to fight off.
DMZ #8
Surveillance and Security
Something Wood doesn’t consider in his detailing of the Free States’ origin is the degree to which the federal government might monitor elements it deems unsavory. Wood said at the time that he wasn’t particularly concerned with the details of the war between the United States and Free States. But there was an opportunity to examine a subject that was important at the time and which has only grown more significant.
The military’s absence in the fictional world of DMZ would not have affected local, state, and federal law enforcement. Following 9/11, United States’ citizens became almost eager to tolerate heightened domestic surveillance at the expense of civil liberties in the name of safety. Could something similar to what is detailed in “Body of a Journalist” happen–or at least, happen as easily as Wood suggests it did? It’s impossible to know. Certainly new technology, such as the ability to record video with cell phones, has made it easier for the government to observe and track its citizens. Consider the use of different sources of video to identify George Floyd protestors. Regardless of one’s stance on the protests, these efforts serve to highlight law enforcement’s willingness to push back on anything it perceives as a threat to itself or the government it serves.
Their origins aside, the Free States are a largely undefined group in “Body of a Journalist.” Wood depicts them alternately as an organized force and a nebulous collection of like minded people. What is clear is that DMZ’s civil war bears no resemblance to the original American Civil War. There aren’t two clearly defined armies lining up against each other. Viktor Ferguson’s kidnapping is just the first example of the asymmetrical warfare the Free States engage in throughout the series.
This is consistent with how Matty views the Free State in his own mind, revealed via his internal monologue as he reads through the old newspapers detailing the Free States’ beginning. Matty remarks on them as an insurgency happening throughout the country. This is a point that Wood almost certainly gets right insofar as it relates to civil division in this country. There is no neat line that would divide one group of states from another over one polarizing issue such as what happened with slavery throughout the 19th century.
Wars Built on Lies
Wood once again uses large scale bombing of the DMZ as a story point. As before, it has no appreciable effect on the DMZ itself and primarily serves as a device to compel Matty to act.
DMZ #10
The bombing isn’t the only gratuitous bit of violence in “Body of a Journalist.” The suicide bombing that takes place on the story’s opening pages is likely intended just to reinforce the statement that summer in the DMZ is always deadlier. Wood links the bombing to tribal and territorial conflict, but it doesn’t contribute to the story. Ultimately it will undermine the impact of an actual suicide bomber plot point in the next major story arc by making such attacks seem commonplace and almost trivial.
DMZ #9
Worse than the random suicide bombing, though, is the plot point of Viktor Ferguson’s deliberate murder. Lying about his murder to create a false flag event might seem over the top. But it’s important to remember that this was written in the shadow of no WMDs being found in Iraq and the growing belief that the Bush administration lied its way into getting a war authorized. And in a larger historical sense, it’s worth keeping in mind that these things do happen–though probably not as often as conspiracy theorists say.
As a storytelling point, though, using such an extreme false flag so early in the series does make it harder to drive tension for these sorts of storyline: given what the United States has already done, is there anything that they won’t do?
DMZ #9
Reporter Versus Icon
The events in “Body of a Journalist” provide the first real test for Matty’s goal of objectivity. The Free States, Liberty News, and the DMZ’s very existence pull the character in several different ways.
Matty’s position as a go-between for the Free States doesn’t necessarily violate the ethics he’s trying to uphold. The Free States see him as the only neutral broker, and while Matty is dragooned into service on that account, he does little besides pass on the Free States’ demands. Liberty News is more forceful, trying to use him, with or without his knowledge as an asset. Matty effectively pushes back against them.
Choosing to negotiate a ceasefire by effectively burying a story is another matter. From a moral standpoint, it might have been the best choice. It’s possible that by preventing a United States invasion of the DMZ, Matty saved the most people possible. But his decision to do so is a drastic departure from his goal of straight journalism. Indeed, a second news outlet offers him the opportunity to broadcast his story since Liberty News wants nothing to do with it. Instead he goes the route of a negotiator on behalf of the DMZ.
DMZ #8
A major component of DMZ is this push and pull between Matty’s role as a reporter and a commentator (or even activist). Matty’s friend Wilson addresses this head on, suggesting that Viktor isn’t worth what’s being done to save him because he’s become a TV icon more than a symbol of true journalism. Matty, on the other hand, has the potential to be that symbol by looking for real stories and telling the truth.
Matty personifies a conflict that exists in American journalism, especially after 2016, where reporters get TV shows and journalism sometimes becomes activism. It will be important to watch the choices Matty makes in this regard. As noted here, Matty’s choice in “Body of a Journalist” might be appealing to the majority of readers. In a sense this is giving the readers what they want to hear because it protects the series’ main characters as well as life in the DMZ, part of which is sympathetic. What happens if Matty starts agitating for something less appealing to readers?
DMZ #8
Final Thoughts
“Body of a Journalist” leans into the ugliest elements that DMZ has in some ways only hinted at. The suicide bombing that opens DMZ #6 displays just how violent the DMZ itself can be. Matty’s illness highlights how bombings and gunfire aren’t the only things that can kill DMZ residents. And beyond the story developments, political ideas and overarching themes leave any sense of subtlety behind. The series’ first five issues introduced readers to the characters and world that they inhabit. But “Body of a Journalist” is the first story arc that is truly representative of the no holds barred style with which DMZ confronted contemporary issues.
Many of those issues continue to reverberate in United States politics and society. The Free States’ fictional origins, directly and indirectly, speak to questions that should perpetually be raised on the nation’s military policies and the role of civilian law enforcement. Matty’s role in the story arc continues to ask questions about how journalism functions in the 21st story. And these are only a few major themes that DMZ confronts head on as the series progresses.
DMZ #6-10 – writer: Bryan Wood; artist: Riccardo Burchielli; colorist: Jeromy Cox; letterer: Jared K. Fletcher
