Volume 2 of the Brian Wood/Riccardo Burchielli Vertigo series DMZ is a step up from the first, offering a clearer focus, better stories and a stronger exploration of the series' premise, but I still can't help but feel that Wood & Co aren't quite there.

I'd LIKE it to get there. The premise is fantastic. An America at war with itself? A new Civil War with New York City as the backdrop? Sounds awesome. I wish it actually lived up to its promise.

The characters are shallower than an inflatable kiddie pool - I've spent 12 issues with Matty Roth and Zee, and feel like I barely know them - and the dialogue lacks life and punch. It's a string of profanities without character or personality. Sure, Wood CAN feature raw language (it's a Vertigo title, after all), but if it's not adding anything to the characters or story, drop it.

And it's not adding anything to the characters or story.

Still, if I'm complaining don't let that be an indication that I didn't enjoy this. I did. The second volume of DMZ was a big step up from the first. There is a good story arc here centering on corruption, propaganda, and manipulating the media to influence public opinion. Some very solid themes here that could have used more exploitation, but nonetheless were enjoyable to read. We've got some new characters, some political intrigue, betrayals and double-crossings, and the sense that something larger is at work. It took a while, but we start to tap into the series' potential. We get into some ideas and some (at times too overt) political commentary.

I like that. I like that especially because I hate to see great potential go to waste.

It's a shame that Vertigo didn't publish the first two volumes as a single 250 pages volume instead of cashing in for two volumes.

Taken together, the first two volumes at least make the impression of an arc story. Taken separately, you pay for two dilluted and weak half stories.

I must restate my conclusion from the review i wrote for the first volume: for someone outside USA (or even New York), this feels like an american would feel reading about a conflict between Northern Mongols and Southern Mongols, without the cultural context of it. Or, more precisely, with the cultural context of the MTV generations - Ipods, grafitti, laptops, hip-hopers and Lara Croft lookalike female journalists are the cultural elements of this picture.

And of course, everything i said in the first review stays the same: weak plotting, sometimes nice artwork and a main character who gets to be a guide for the "tourist" readers eyes rather than a character in a story. Of course, he's a journalist, but that's just an excuse for the weak plotting.

The first two volumes could've been concentrated in 2-3 issues without losing anything. The slow pacing would fit a non-graphic politically-heavy dystopian novel but this way it only makes boring comics. The debut of an on-going series is supposed to hook you, not bore you so i dont care if it gets better later.

Volume 2 of Brian Wood's Vertigo series provides some insights into the civil war that's divided the country and explains how Manhattan morphed into "DMZ." The bullets and bombs still fly fast and furious, and journalist Matt Roth goes from reporting to the story to becoming the story. The artwork, by Riccardo Burchielli and fill-in artist Kristian Donaldson, is nothing short of amazing--one of the better pairings of writer and artist(s) in some time in the comics world. "Body of a Journalist" is better as a whole than the first collection, although I give both collections the thumbs-up.

Get this book and Vol. 1 -- not tomorrow, not later, RIGHT NOW. You won't be disappointed.

DMZ is an amazing comic and I'm so glad I got into it. As fun as read the 2nd set for DMZ: Body of A Journalist, it just didn't strike me the way the first one did. By no stretch of the imagination am I saying it was bad, far from it. I gobbled up every page with my eyes as quick as possible, and was left wanting more. I enjoyed meeting the odd group of people in the first Volume more, even though the story in the second seems a little more fleshed out.
If you like reading DMZ Vol. 1, DMZ Vol. 2 will satisfy you just fine.