What Inspires Brian Wood?
Over on his blog, Brian Wood talks about his inpsiration for DMZ's Friendly Fire story arc:
The inspiration for DMZ's "Friendly Fire" came partly from the Haditha killings, where Marines shot up a few houses filled with Iraqi families back in 2005 (it was also partly inspired by a 60 Minutes interview with some of the soldiers involved (Sgt. Frank Wuterich) and the disgusting way Scott Pelley conducted both the interview and himself).
Read more here. It's worth it. It makes me want the comic book medium to be more of an outlet for mature social criticism/commentary. It's rare to find a book like DMZ which can fictionalize as real event and they story stands on its own. What else is out there that does this? Shooting War by Dan Goldman and Anthony Lappe takes current events and heightens them in a compelling way and got a lot of noteriety for doing so. Would we as readers buy more of this?
http://www.exclaim.ca/articles/multiarticlesub.aspx
?csid1=119&csid2=20&fid1=29997
This link is for an article about combining comic books and journalism. I think that Brian Wood using comic books for social commentary is a great and direct usage of the medium, and this article helps show that there is plenty more room for that kind of thing. I think that as long as the stories are engaging and well made, then readers will keep buying them.