Department Of Truth #3: When The Lie Is all You Have…

If I had to sum up this issue of DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH #3 it would be this…It’s absolutely horrific…but let me qualify that. It is not horrifically written or illustrated, in fact from a writing and art point of view this series continues to be an absolute tour de force in excellence from Tynion IV, Simmonds and the entire team that is making it. No, it’s horrific because the subject it tackles is extremely upsetting, a very real open wound on the soul of all humanity in the real world. School shootings and gun violence in schools anywhere in the world are an absolute travesty and the incalculable loss and trauma that these events cause is an exceptionally difficult topic to tackle, a veritable field of landmines that if handled incorrectly could blow up in one’s face.

The issue follows a mothers loss in one such horrific, blighted moment and we see her journey as she is sucked into a world were the very real violence and pain of the event is twisted by online conspiracy theorists and evil men who fear the loss of their very precious right to bear arms so much that they can be driven to take something so devastating and call it fake and even concoct videos espousing the view that the whole incident is fake, made up to rob people of their precious rights. This is truly horrible but it gets even worse as this woman already wracked in grief and loss of her child is slowly twisted by the lies of crackpots and evil men into thinking that they are right that it’s all fake and that her child is in fact alive. Sure Tynion throws in the fictional idea of an artifact and the shadowy Black Hat organization as part of the tale as well as the Department Of Truth intervening to stop the twisting of this person in order to prevent the warping of reality to this twisting of the truth but there deeply disturbing part is that it wrings so true to real life and all of all the lies and misdirection we see happening in mainstream media today. Tynion avoids trying to implicitly make things black and white…there are no real heroes here, as our DOT operatives are only there to protect the prevailing truth not help the victim who is left as a casualty in this ongoing war to control the prevailing truth in the world.

Tynion never points a finger in his writing or dialogue at gun lobbyists or any specific organization other than the fictional one he has created with the idea of them being responsible for this horrible event but instead Simmonds does so through the art and does so brilliantly in both subtle and far less subtle ways which if you look carefully you can spot from page 1 (look carefully enough you’ll catch it) There are several amazing splashes which juxtapose the characters journey against backgrounds filled with the red white and blue of the American flag, bullets and heaps of money and several others that really make a comment on the state of the world we are in and how being wrapped up in a conspiracy and false media is actually is ultimately making us responsible for the deaths of countless children in our society…it’s disturbing but exceptionally compelling at the same time and that’s great comic storytelling when both the writing and the art can speak to you on two or more levels while still being a cohesive story as a whole.