Department of Truth #9 // Review
It’s not easy to hunt something that isn’t there. It’s a lot more tricky to pursue something that’s only there because it isn’t. Hawk leads Cole into the woods to hunt Bigfoot in Department of Truth #9. Writer James Tynion IV continues to excavate the deeper portions of popular consciousness in another issue brought to the page by Martin Simmonds. Narrative fiction in the form of a hand-written journal fuses with a whole lot of beautiful static images, but Tynion’s world seems to be veering more and more away from the essence of the comic book format.
Cole Turner is being led into the woods by a guy in a US flag baseball cap. (The guy calls himself “Hawk.”) Cole and Hawk are hunting a sasquatch. In a world where popular faith creates truth, a simple hunt for a mythical creature can have more profound implications than the general public could safely imagine. Stories are told on a quest in which no stories could possibly survive in a long and winding journey into the heart of the wild side of popular American consciousness. The hunt may prove to be easier than one might expect, but the search is only part of the problem in the world of the DoT.
The issue opens with a couple of pages drawn from the past journal of someone obsessed with Bigfoot. Then things switch gears to the present, with Turner and Hawk going into the woods to hunt for what’s only there because it isn’t. The deeper poetry of this kind of hunt seems to be lost to Tynion, who seems a lot more interested in exploring some of the basic narratives of bigfoot lore in a way that feeds itself into the world of the DoT. Tynion definitely has put a hell of a lot of thought into the overall themes of the lore, but he’s done so in a way that isn’t nearly as compelling as previous points in the series.
Simmonds has a beautiful sense of overall composition the once again provides a skeletal structure for the text-heavy stories that Tynion is pounding into the page. Lots and lots of narration. Lots and lots of dialogue. And in the middle of it all is this huge sasquatch in the middle of the page that also serves as the grassy patches beneath the forest that Turner and Hawk excavate. It’s beautiful stuff. It’s just too bad that the narrative isn’t better integrated with the story that’s being delivered.
There IS some narrative rendering in this issue that’s advancing the overall story, which is a bit of a relief. The format that’s started to reveal itself throughout the series seems to run the risk of falling into a “conspiracy of the month” sort of a format that could become pretty tedious if Tynion and company kept pursuing it. Still, Cole’s walk with Turner and Hawk advances both characters in a promising direction.
