DMZ: FRIENDLY FIRE VOLUME 4 PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Viktor Kalvachev,Nathan Fox,Riccardo Burchielli,Kristian Donaldson,Brian Wood | 128 pages | 20 Mar 2008 | DC Comics | 9781401216627 | English | New York, NY, United States ​DMZ Vol 4: Friendly Fire on Apple Books Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of DMZ, Vol. Sep 19, Jan Philipzig rated it did not like it Shelves: censorship , civil-rights , mass-media , war , work , activism , romance , youth , vertigo. As you may recall, protagonist Matty generally looks excellent amidst the ruins of New York City. Except that everything about this is still shit. View all 4 comments. Sep 06, Felicia rated it really liked it Shelves: graphic-novels. Enjoyed this a lot, more than 3. I thought it dealt with really interesting issues from some objective viewpoints, raised more questions than answers and I think that was the goal, and they did it really well. Provocative and artistic. View all 5 comments. Jul 07, J. Keely rated it liked it Shelves: reviewed , comics. This is the most interesting volume of DMZ so far, because the structure of the story forces Wood out of his standard voice. By choosing to do a Rashomon story or a Jose Chung's , depending on your specialty , Wood ensures that each character in the story has a different view and different voice, because the whole story is based on the idea that everyone sees events in different ways. I only wish that he had been differentiating his characters and their points-of-view this much right from the beg This is the most interesting volume of DMZ so far, because the structure of the story forces Wood out of his standard voice. I only wish that he had been differentiating his characters and their points-of-view this much right from the beginning. Even in this story, we only really get differences in tone from the characters our protagonist interviews, not from the rest of the familiar cast, so it makes me worry that once this arc is over, we'll go back to the same flat characters as before: the saintly local nurse, the thug soldiers, the slimy politicians, and other such lackluster depictions. The fact that wood is trying to depict a conflicted, many-sided issue with no single, easy answer also means that this story has the most conceptual depth in the series. There are some moments here that approach real profundity, though there are also some trite simplifications that undercut the message. In all, this is the first arc in DMZ that feels like a Vertigo title to me, with nods to complexity and depth, even if things don't quite reach the level of climax earlier authors managed. But then, the early, pioneering authors who transformed comics into a modern, sophisticated art form were coming from a very different place. Gerber, Moore, Milligan, and Gaiman couldn't look back at a group of proven greats in comics to learn their trade, there was no blueprint for what modern comics could be. They were inventive and revolutionary because they had to be, they had to make things up as they went along. The new generation of comics authors live in a different world, in a world where comics are already proven as art, and they can search out and see what good comics are supposed to look like. However, I'm not sure this is a good thing, in terms of creativity, because instead of being forced to create something new, to prove themselves, they can just write in imitation of previously successful styles. I have often said that in order to do something well--to develop a voice in art--requires many varied sources of inspiration. To write like Tolkien, you don't read Tolkien, you have to read and understand what influenced him. To play like Zeppelin, it's not enough to listen to Zeppelin, you have to understand the music they were listening to. If you take one artistic vision and try to recreate it, all you're going to do is dumb it down, because you're not adding anything new into the mix. Again and again, reading these new authors, I feel this sense that they are taking an easier path, copying the forms of the comic writers who came before them, and it's no wonder that their stories come out lackluster, because they haven't added anything new into the mix to make it their own. However, if Wood can continue this upswing, continue diversifying characters and viewpoints, working hard to make a plot that is deep instead of one which is straightforward, and learns how to communicate his story and ideas through character action, not talking heads, narration, and 'news stories', then this comic might actually get somewhere. My Suggested Reading In Comics Jun 03, James DeSantis rated it really liked it. This volume was really good. I think Wood found his stride now. So this is a single story of a terrible event. When the Military was trying to deesclate a situation with a crowd of people in trench-like coats and when one looked like he pulled out a weapon they began shooting. Nearly everyone died in the massive group. Years later one of those shooters claims it was not justified and tries to stand up to the military. Matty decides to report on this story but as he begins to get the story from m This volume was really good. Matty decides to report on this story but as he begins to get the story from multiple sources, things get worse and worse. Overall, this is really fast paced for the story it is telling. It's a slowburn at first, and maybe not that interested, but quickly because a perspective sort of story. Where everyone viewed that day as something different. Who do you believe? Who shot first? Why did they shoot? All these questions build but the final answer is the real hard hitting moment. The last few pages are so fucked up but well done that I loved it. The retelling might have gotten a bit boring at times but the final issue made up for it and landed. A for sure 4 out of 5 story. Jul 06, Ill D rated it it was ok Shelves: comic-reviews , reviewed , comics. Flexing his Leftie credentials yet again, Woods here reduplicates the Kent State Shootings unto a midrash for our modern era. Citizens this, armed soldiers that, innocents mowed down, you know your history. Yet, once against and this was a surprise to yours truly the exact same event was redone in TransMet too. Woods explicitly illustrates who is in the right here and who is utterly in the wrong here. We have no chance to make up our minds about this one. No presentation of further evidence. No cross-examination. For Brian Woods, the arbiter of truth is the the selfsame judge, jury and executioner of the series, the author. May 25, Carolyn rated it it was amazing Shelves: fiction , graphic. This volume was just fantastic. Jul 30, Peter Derk rated it liked it. DMZ is a book of real highs and lows for me. The lows come in because sometimes I'm straight-up lost in the plot. Which I think is common. Because a lot of the plots revolve around big conspiracies with double-crosses and unknown entities, how is a person ever going to keep it all straight? The highs are situations like the end of this volume. In essence, a lot of bullshit is blamed on the wrong guy, a soldier in this case. And I think that's where DMZ speaks to something very real and true. The bi DMZ is a book of real highs and lows for me. The big, over-arching ideas in DMZ that mirror our own, the ones about corporations being in bed with government and essentially profiting from war and violence is just old news. It's sickening news, it's the oldest story in the book I'm sure some asshole made a shitload of money selling armor to knights and shit too , which is why it doesn't do a whole lot for me. But the ideas that get smaller, when the book focuses in on individuals, I think that's where it finds its footing. This book in particular sends a couple messages in a very effective way. It really IS easier to write off victims of war violence who are categorized as collateral damage when they speak a different language, wear different clothes, and live in places that just look so Other. I'm sorry, I have a bad brain, but it's much easier for me to not imagine someone as having a life when that life is so different from my own, and when all you really see is quick flashes of streets filled with rubble. Setting the book in Manhattan, the America-est of American cities, flips that whole idea. People really talk a lot about supporting the troops, but I think that they have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the military works. I'm not going to get into it on a big scale here, but here's what I want to say: You do not support troops by giving the people who boss them around carte blanche. Underequipped, undertrained, outnumbered, young men are not done any favors by you not questioning the people who send them to fight. As an American citizen, the government is your employee. If you owned a McDonald's and saw a manager assigning one of the cashiers a useless, pointlessly dangerous task, you would not just let that happen for the sake of maintaining harmony at that McDonald's.