Department of Truth #15 // Review
There’s a kid wearing a tinfoil hat who is being questioned by a mysterious government agent. The kid sounds crazy. The government agent would be crazy for expecting anything of worth out of him if it weren’t for the fact that the kid works for Lee Harvey Oswald in one of the most totally secretive organizations in the whole world. The kid tells his story in The Department of Truth #15. Writer James Tynion IV continues to weave bits of dark conspiracy together in an enjoyable existential twisting that is brought to the page by artist David Romero. Tynion and Romero gently play with the horror of paranoia in a weird, little conceptual funhouse of an issue.
The kid in the tinfoil hat who works for Lee Harvey Oswald is clearly upset on some level. He knows that he lives in a world where faith creates truth, but he also knows that the organization he works for is trying to manipulate the world. Tell the world of strange things in the sky, and they’ll start to see monsters that quickly take form as monstrous Mothmen. The organization has been manipulating the public into creating their own monsters for shadowy reasons.
Tynion switches format for this issue. The meter view with the tinfoil hat kid takes the form of a few images accompanying largely typewritten transcripts of an interview with some blocks of text that have been redacted in long lines of black. It’s a fun, immersive look at the world of the series, but it lacks the impact of actual eyewitness accounts of the paranormal. There’s something that much more intense about the stories of those who have actually had brushes with the unknown. The total fiction approach DOES, however, allow Tynion to tell a fascinating story drawn directly from deliciously dark implications of a world in which belief in something can make it horrifyingly, life-threateningly real.
The fifteenth issue in the series completely abandons a sequential art format in favor of a series of hard copy transcripts of the interview accompanied by various photos and images that have been paper clipped and taped into the classic manila folder. The distinctive look of black courier font against a white sheet in a khaki file folder goes a long way toward capturing the world of The Department of Truth. Romero manages some absolutely gorgeous pictures of Mothman that serve as a brilliant centerpiece for the horror that are amplified by the sudden addition of a perpetually smiling proto-Man-In-Black who is introduced in the midst of things.
Any fictional exploration into the lore of unexplained phenomena is going to have a hell of a time being anywhere near as interesting as the phenomena itself. Tynion and company once again bring something interesting to the page that can only be brought forth in a fictional treatment. It may not be as fun or fascinating as the real thing, but Tynion is telling a thoroughly enjoyable story that is quite in tune with its own strengths by the fifteenth issue.
