After a few weeks of covering day-to-day life in the DMZ, Matty finally gets his first big news break: an interview with a notorious local tribal boss. However, when Matty arrives to the interview, who he finds sitting next to the crime boss could make for an even bigger scoop.
Brian Wood has a good title on his hands here, but I think he needs to take a step back and decide on his narrative focus. The ill-defined protagonist is getting too much screen time at the expense of what's really good about this book, and that's the fascinating setting. Read Full Review
The aspect of the book which continues to be most successful for me is the overall sense of strong visual design of the DMZ universe, all the way from the attention-grabbing and individual covers to the unique character designs and the consistently and convincingly war-torn urban look of the book. This issue also changes the way the credits are presented, as a single line of credits appears in each panel for the first few pages. Its clearly an attempt to create a very cinematic feel to the book, and it works to an extent. Whilst I love the occasional visual contributions Brian Wood makes to the title, which stand alone as well-composed pieces of stark graphic art, its the solid and consistent work of Italian artist Riccardo Burchielli which has kept me coming back to the book. Burchiellis style is interesting, mixing a slightly exaggerated sense of realism with a firm grasp of tone and emotional content in a manner which is reminiscent of some of Tim Sales earlier work. There Read Full Review
Overall this series is good, but the colouring is terrible. It is far too dark in the majority of panels and completely obscures the line work. I appreciate that the colourist was trying to convey tone and mood, but when you can't see what is actually happening in a significant number of panels, then they just got it wrong.
© 2024
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