Department of Truth // Review
It’s all a matter of perspective. There is a horror in the idea that popular belief could alter the truth of reality on a fundamental, concrete level. From a new age, hippie perspective, however, this nightmare could be some kind of dream. Writer James Tynion IV and guest artist Alison Sampson explore the fusion between dreams and nightmares in The Department of Truth #16. Samson’s art has a dreamy, twisting lines that recall that art style of the era as Tynion’s narrative carves out a lazy fugue of a fusion between setting and era that lays down just enough narrative connections to make it an enjoyable trip.
Lee Harvey Oswald may not have died, but he’s not exactly living. He’s caught somewhere between the early morning and the early afternoon with a woman. Both of them are caught somewhere between a love and war. They talk politics. Hard to tell who has a firmer grasp of the truth when he pulls a gun on her. Or maybe not. It’s difficult to tell. Bobby Kennedy had just been assassinated the previous night. How does Lee Harvey Oswald feel about this? It’s difficult to say. He still has so much more to learn.
Tynion plunges the narrative into a late 1960s bath of paranoia, altered consciousness, and blurred perceptions. The references to various events of the late 1960s play out without much of a central gravity. While this fits the overall psychedelia of the situation, it doesn’t exactly make for terribly compelling fiction. To a certain extent, all Tynion is doing is plugging the premise that he’s established throughout much of the series into the 1960s counterculture. There doesn’t seem to be a strong enough pull for the chapter justifying itself beyond it a desire to look at another point in history through the Department of Truth lens.
Samson nails the hippie wine art style of the era with Impressive precision. Things aren’t always perfectly well defined. What the style lacks in definition, it more than makes up for in overall mood. I’m judging from the art alone; the comic book ends up feeling like something that fell through a strange wormhole and some alternate history. That being said, it lacks the punch of similar art that would’ve been floating around, books of the era. Truly trippy work from the late 1960s by artists like R. Crumb and Jim Steranko had a crisper sense of insanity about it when it delved into dreamy states of consciousness. Samson’s deftly hazy doodles are a bit wispy by contrast but no less potent in its own way.
There is a way to tie in protests with assassinations and the psychedelia of the 1960s that would have delved further into a fusion between horror and social consciousness. Tynion Lightly trips through vague references to many different things In an issue that plays out like a faintly haunting hallucination. The chapter could’ve been more. It’s too bad Tynion couldn’t find the right edge to the fusion.
