Set in New York City, sometime in the near future, in the midst of a civil war the island of Manhattan has been into a demilitarized zone. in Brian Wood’s DMZ the citizens of Middle America having rising up against the pre-emptive war policies of the US government, causing a Second American Civil War.

The protagonist is Matthew (Matty) Roth, a naïve photo journalism intern from Long Island, who enters the DMZ with a news crew. He becomes trapped when the rest of the media and the soldiers escorting them are killed in a firefight with “insurgents”.

Matty becomes the only journalist on the ground in the DMZ and he begins to report on the daily struggle of life for the everyday citizens of Manhattan.