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The Department of Truth: The Most Important Comic of 2020

Up is down and down is up

By Chris RiggioPublished 3 years ago 3 min read
6
The Department of Truth #2 Cover art by Martin Simmonds

The Department of Truth is a truly fascinating piece of sequential art and something that I haven't been able to stop thinking about since I read the first two issues. Today, misinformation regularly runs rampant across social media, giving birth to a plethora of new conspiracy theories for people to consume; an interesting and often amusing byproduct of the Trump/Fake-New era. But what if these conspiracy theories had the ability to take on a life of their own if enough people believed them? This is the concept this book sets out to explore.

The Department of Truth is a new on going series published by Image comics, written by James Tynion IV, current writer of Batman, best known for his extensive portfolio of work at DC comics and brilliantly illustrated by Martin Simmonds.

The artwork is an absolutely perfect match for this narrative, his completely unique style is like nothing I've ever seen before. With nightmarish warped perspectives, colors that bleed into each other and the use of shadows and jagged lines in every panel, Simmonds creates this dreamy atmosphere filled with unease, dread and paranoia.

The Department of Truth #2 art by Martin Simmonds

The story revolves around an FBI Agent named Cole Turner, an instructor at Quantico who researches the online activity of right wing white nationalists. The majority of the first issue is a recount of the day before, which was a particularly odd day for Cole. As part of his research he was attending the Flat Earth Conference in Washington, but something seemed extremely off, a feeling he couldn't quite shake. As he's about to retire to his hotel room for the night he's approached and summoned to meet the two right wing billionaires who run the conference. Upon entering their suite he's cheerfully greeted by the men who proclaim they've been looking to recruit someone in an intelligence position for a long time. He's the quickly shuffled into a side room where several old white men in suits are watching a copy of the moon landing in black and white on a projector. Cole immediately realizes something is off about the recording, the angle of the shot was wrong and it was from a completely different vantage point. As he's trying to piece all of this together the camera pans over to a man holding a cup of coffee (no space suit, no anything) and the room erupts with cheers. As if this wasn't enough excitement for Agent Turner, he's then asked to accompany the men on their private jet to see just how deep this rabbit hole really went and I think you can probably take a guess as to where things go from here.

The Department of Truth #1 art by Martin Simmonds

The first issue does a nice job of setting up who and what the Department of Truth is and laying the ground work for what I believe will be an amazing series. The second issue, while also an exceptional piece of work, takes a slight step back in my opinion, as it spends an inordinate amount of time delving into the main characters back story instead of just jumping right into enforcing truth and taking on far right conspiracy theorists.

The Department of Truth makes an important statement, it demonstrates that the truth is malleable; that a lie, conspiracy theory, misinformation, fake news or whatever other name you chose to give it can actually become true if enough people believe it. Meaning that if enough people really thought the Earth was flat that suddenly irrefutable evidence could be willed into existence for all to see, thus causing chaos and mistrust. It's up to the Department of Truth to contain that spread and enforce reality.

It's impossible to read this book and not draw analogies to phenomenons like QAnon or the circulation of misinformation pertaining to COVID-19, voter fraud or any number of hot button topics like these. It's also hard to not think about the nearly 73 million people that voted for Trump and the conspiracy theories or pieces of fake news they were giving weight to and trying to will in to existence, but perhaps thats a tangential rabbit hole to explore another time.

comics
6

About the Creator

Chris Riggio

I like you and value your opinion about things on the internet.

Reader insights

Nice work

Very well written. Keep up the good work!

Top insights

  1. Eye opening

    Niche topic & fresh perspectives

  2. Heartfelt and relatable

    The story invoked strong personal emotions

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Comments (2)

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  • Roy Stevens11 months ago

    This looks really interesting; I'll have to look out for it. Here we are just two years later literally living the dream with endless deepfakes and GPT bots rewriting the truth!

  • Thanks for your comments on my piece, this is impressive and have subscribed

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