ABSTRACT
Brian Wood’s DMZ series chooses an unusual approach in dealing with the issues of violence and war. Its setting relocates the experience of present-day society and its involvement in war from the peripheries of the Western hemisphere to the very icon of both American and Western culture—New York City. The series strives to make readers aware not so much of questions of direct action but of how everyday life might change under circumstances of war; what might become important; and which transformations politics, the role of media and even friendship might undergo. This perspective on the matters of society and culture during the state of war and military oppression is facilitated by quite a traditional approach in storytelling: a young and inexperienced journalist who enters into the field and quickly evolves as key figure in the events but is as much an outsider to almost all the parties involved in the war as he is an insider of the key events. DMZ is designed as a projection and visualisation of the violence that Western societies usually export to their peripheries. It opens the view on the plurality of interests, actors, positions and emotions driven by and driving a society turned into battleground. This chapter reflects on the series’ specific approach by referring to theories of narratology and visuality, and argues that DMZ remains in the tradition of classic war comics whilst also transcending it.
