Find The Department Of Truth, Vol 1: The End Of The World Conceived By James Tynion IV Rendered As Textbook
I own this book,
Cole's whole life has been defined by conspiracy theories as a kid he was part of the Satanic Panic movement in thes, he studied conspiracies from Bush did/to flat earth and he taught them at the FBI.
Attending a flat earth convention to learn more, he discovers an impossible truth, a truth that gets him taken by the Department of Truth where he learns that all the conspiracies he's dismissed as ravings are true.
All of them. Lee Harvey Oswald told him so, But this organisation has been in charge of letting people know the truth as whoever controls the truth, controls the world.
I really enjoyed this book, I'm a fan of James Tynion's writing and I found this first volume to be dark and gritty enough for my liking.
Cole was an interesting enough character and I'm interested in seeing where they take his character, The art was good, the story was good, I don't have a lot of notes for this one, Sometimes the popular opinion is correct, In this case it most definitely is, I was recommended The Department of Truth from almost every comic book seller, fan and acquaintance I have.
Never mind that seemingly every major, minor and upcoming artist has done a variant cover for it, Luckily it really is crazy good, if also a bit bonkers at the same time,
The first thing to note is that the artwork is very unconventional, Martin Simmonds does an excellent job, with his unique artistic style, of making you feel a bit like your in a dream.
Perhaps just like our leading man feels,
With James Tynion IV the amazing genius behind my fave series of late, Something is Killing the Children on board to write it is a very well thought out plot with only relevant dialogue and wording included.
I love that our leading man is married to a man just like Tynion and does not come off as overtly gay.
Hes just a regular guy who happens to work for the FBI and gets caught up in flat earth, reptilians, and every other conspiracy out there.
I really cant say anything about the true plot other than that I cant wait to learn more about the woman in red Scarlett and really look forward to how much further into conspiracies we go.
Meanwhile I have Volon order, and am going to go buy more beautiful variant comic covers of this odd, unique, exciting, and just bananas series.
Grab a copy, I swear you wont be disappointed, And if you are I dare you to stop reading without learning who the woman in red is.
I mean her eyes alone are a quandary I have to know the answer to!!! If this continues to be this good, then damn.
“The people who control the truth control the world, ”
The Queen, in Alice in Wonderland, tries to persuade Alice that you can believe impossible things and suggests that it helps if you practice.
"Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast," she declares,
The Department of Truth: The End of the World is a series about conspiracy theories and the destabilizing effect they have on the world.
What conspiracy theories do you subscribe to Aliens UFOs Hey, maybe not a joke anymore!, What about a longstanding one, the rumor that Jews eat Christian babies, The faked moon landing Flat earth Faked Sandy Hook with child actors JFK as CIA victim Riggedelection Clintons as murdering pedophiles The eighties Satanic panic Jewish lasers starting California forest fires Reptillian illuminati Marjorie Taylor Greene actually exists!
In an over the top style reminiscent of Jonathan Hickman, James Tynion creates a first volume of mostly exposition touching on many conspiracy theories and their origin not in QAnon or Breitbart or Russian Bots but in an organization called Black Hat, at war with the Department of Truth over the political and economic soul of the universe, though who the good and bad guys are is still up in the air.
Theres a kind of XFiles “smoking man” spouting shadowy theories, Theres a woman in red with no eyes, and some kind of Satan character A guy named Lee Harvey Oswald and his assistant Ruby working for the Department of Truth Is someone on acid here Wait, now they're telling it is good for you, again That theory!
In the middle of this is Cole Turner, who teaches about conspiracy theories.
He attends a Flat Earth conference where he flies to the end of the world and sees that the world is actually flat.
Then everyone but he on this Arctic expedition is killed, for some reason, and why he is not killed is not clear.
So he is confused, naturally, and never quite decides what is going on, Sometimes "they" seems to inhabit his dreams, What is real!
I really really like the idea of a comics series about conspiracy theories, especially one that isnt just satire but tinged with
horror, as this one is, but this all seems like the wheels have come off on a fast corner, as I always think when I read Hickman.
Theres some suggestion that we have always lived with conspiracy theories the Plague as punishment from God, AIDS as punishment from God, and so on, and postwar US taking control of the Truth Machine makes some sense, but this comic is as crazy as QAnon to me right now.
Theres a suggestion in this volume that/the day of the JFK killing in Dallas, and the almost immediate skepticism about who killed him and whyis the day the world started to really fall apart, where cracks really first became visible in the world as we thought we knew it.
Intriguing kInd of! This could be seen as an inventive fantasy with appropriately shadowy/sketchy/splashy artwork or just crazy.
Reminds me of Burroughs,by Stephen King, Men in Black, with shadowy collage art similar to Bill Sienkiewicz and Dave McKean that I actually like a lot more than the story at this point.
But I want this to make sense! I want to like it and learn from it, but there might be just three or four threads than it can handle.
I may read one more volume to see if the fog clears,
.stars
Its distinctive art is the most impressive part of this book and its composed with obvious talent, though ironically its not very original in how it so closely mimics Bill Sienkiewiczs iconic style.
Regardless, many pages are still stunning as pieces of art by themselves, but theyre also sometimes illsuited for clearly depicting the story.
Tynions writing in this is much more shaky to me, Theres a ton of overlap with Something Is Killing The Children, the other celebrated creatorowned ongoing horror series he currently writes: a dude from Wisconsin is brought into a secret organization fighting against monstrous things brought to life through the power of belief.
TDoT swaps SIKTCs monsters in the woods for contemporary headline happenings, and action movie bombast for spy thriller paranoia, but the two series still cover bizarrely similar premises.
In these first five issues Tynion involves what feels like every popular modern conspiracy theory JFK, reptilians, QAnon, Sandy Hook false flaggers, satanic panic, Clinton murders, Epstein,/, Flat Earthers, Obama birthers, fake moon landing but only at a very surface level that offers nothing new if you also already have a superficial familiarity with them.
More frustratingly, he writes in a ton of monologue that reads like his own selfrighteous editorializing on the topic rather than the characters voices, and that might be okay if he had any interesting insight into these theories or the people who believe them, but instead its all laymen psychoanalysis like “conspiracy theories give people a false sense of superiority and control in their life that they dont feel otherwise” plus a little bit of petty political snobbishness.
And I dont disagree with much of what hes saying, but its just all stuff that was already in my own head before I opened this book, and it seems to think its much smarter or more daring than it is.
More positively, theres a late reveal that suggests the plot might go in a direction thats more interesting to me.
Theres also a few neat touches I loved, like several of the antagonists striking character designs, or the agencys archive essentially being a giant red yarn conspiracy board stretched out to the size of a large library.
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