For a guy who's been busy chronicling future American civil wars, Brian Wood has remained remarkably upbeat about the state of our union – at least until recently.
"I always say we aren't close to [a second civil war] at all," joked Wood, whose dazzling comic book DMZ chronicles a confrontation between the federal government and separatist Free States armies. "Then things like the Tea Party happen, guys strapped with guns show up to hear the president talk, polls come out that say a majority of one political party think Obama is a racist, non-American, terrorist cheerleader who wants gays to come to our schools and teach our kids how to abort babies. Suddenly, it seems less unlikely."
Still, the Brooklyn-based writer said he puts thoughts of societal disintegration out of his head when he's not dreaming up scenarios for DMZ, which marks its 50th issue Wednesday with a special edition featuring artwork by Watchmen's Dave Gibbons and other pulp standouts.
"I prefer to assume the worst would never happen here," Wood said in an e-mail interview with Wired.com, "that there are enough sane people in America that a second Civil War just couldn't get off the ground."
Being a dot-com boomer and buster, Wood is a veteran of a nerdier econo-pocalypse. During the digital age's unruly march to maturity, he designed websites, worked at Rockstar Games and toiled in the comics game. The hard work – and the dot-com meltdown – taught him valuable lessons, he said.
"I learned to save money," Wood said, "because nothing lasts forever, even if everyone in the world is saying that it will. From Rockstar, I learned to never, ever, ever, ever work 100-plus-hour weeks on something to which you don't hold the copyright. Especially when some of your bosses, who are younger than you, are off spending their ship-on-time bonus checks."
Although best known for the gritty DMZ, which filters the civil war through the canny journalistic observations of lead character Matty Roth, Wood is equally adept tackling other topics with his comics. He dabbles in Norse mythology in Northlanders and dives into dream noir in Demo. (The latter, which began as a 12-issue limited series in 2003, has been resurrected as a six-issue miniseries, Demo Volume 2, with issue No. 2 out Wednesday from Vertigo.)
Demo's resurrection is rewarding, Wood says.
"I'm excited to work with artist Becky Cloonan again, just making comics like we used to," he said. "The first run of Demo back in 2003 was a fuzzy, feel-good time in my career, where it felt like we were really pushing ourselves in new and creatively exciting directions. And now I just want to see how well we work together with the benefit of thousands of comic book pages under our belts."
Rounding out Wood's comics trifecta: Northlanders, his bloodthirsty variation on Viking mythology, also continues Wednesday. It stands strangely apart from DMZ's rampages through war-torn Manhattan and the lucid dreams of Demo. But its narrative architecture gives Wood plenty of room to roam.
"It's my favorite book right now," Wood said of Northlanders. "It offers a fantastic creative edge, since each story in the series is unconnected to the one previous to it. That allows me to refine it as I go, so each volume of Northlanders is stronger than the one before it. I do a lot of research for it, and that's been a real benefit. I never tire of learning about that history."
While DMZ is most likely to succeed Grand Theft Auto's devastation of New York, Wood thinks Northlanders should make the jump to the gamerverse.
"There should be an Xbox version," the Rockstar vet said. "It might be grim at times: 'What's the button combo to torch your enemies' hall while laying down suppressing fire at the exits to pen them in and roast them alive?'"
Given the surge of films based on comics and games, it's probably only a matter of time before cite>DMZ and Northlanders get made into games, TV shows or films. But Wood isn't holding his breath.
"I don't write comics to see them turned into films," he said, "since the odds of yours being one of the very, very few that get turned into movies is so small you might as well just play Lotto. But there's always something going on: options, meetings and treatments being written for some of my books. I've learned with bitter tears not to feel like it something that's supposed to happen. I think of it as free money."
See Also:
- Comics Smartass Bob Fingerman Laughs Off the Apocalypse in From the Ashes
- Apocalypse, and How: Viggo Mortensen's Road Winds On
- Repo Men: Perfect Metaphor for Econopocalypse?
- Margaret Atwood, Speculative Fiction’s Apocalyptic Optimist
- Grant Morrison Talks Brainy Comics, Sexy Apocalypse
- 2012's Doomsday Predecessors: An Apocalyptic Primer
