America is in the midst of a civil war, and New York City is a battle ground popularly called the DMZ. Matty, who grew up a privileged annoying richwhitestraightable guy, is still pretty privileged and annoying in the DMZ. The plot is weak and certainly not novel. The art is typical Vertigo--lots of harsh lines, cross-hatching, gratuitous female nakedness (without matching sexy male nakedness). An obese woman in a bikini is blown apart in the opening scene. There's a whole page of a guy getting shot in the head in graphic slo-mo. So...there's that. Those (big) caveats aside, the DMZ itself takes a larger role in this trade. What kind of food is available (mostly vegan), water shortages, zines, PTSD, what neighborhoods are left--all of it is at least mentioned, although not explored in-depth. ( )

An improvement over Volume 1. I'm more interested in Matty as a person, someone in way over his head, but determined to do the right thing, even though what is right in this world is almost impossible to say. ( )

The best part about this second volume for me were the last two issues included at the end; a story of Zee and how her new life began post collapse, and a sort of sketchbook collage of interviews with denizens of the city maps and stuff. That last bit more than anything else gave me a sense of how things really work in this fictional post-collapse NYC and what interesting things could be coming up in the future of this series. ( )