The Department of Truth #30 // Review
Lee Harvey Oswald walks into the Oval Office. He’s there to talk with the occupant of that office about possibly making America great again. The year is 2025 and Oswald is part of a top-secret government department that he knows about. Prior to this, there’s a hell of a lot of conversation about who should know what and why in The Department of Truth #30. Writer James Tynion IV continues his ambitious, wide-ranging conspiracy drama with artist artist Martin Simmonds. The series climbs its way towards a dramatic crossroads that it’s been heading toward for quite some time.
Ruby is looking for forgiveness from a homeless man in a diner. He’s honestly quite a bit better-off than she is in a way and maybe she’s looking for some reassurance from him. Meanwhile, a tinfoil hat guy is talking to Lee Harvey Oswald about the possibility of letting it all go. Elsewhere, Cole Turner is talking to the guy in the US flag hat about it. All of the people who worked with the Department of Truth from the early days are getting very, very old. The world is changing. It just might be time to let everyone know what’s going on.
Tynion has been moving through a hell of a lot of different ground over the course of 2.5 years or so. He almost seems to be reaching a point where he might be beginning to make some sort of a point about governments and power and conspiracy and so on, but it’s difficult to tell quite where it is that he’s going with it all. And while the overall momentum of the series seems to be accelerating, it’s difficult to tell quite where it is that anything at all is as heavy conversations discuss big issues the feel pretty solidly unanchored in anything real...which is honestly kind of the point: there aren’t any universals anymore. Truth is squishy and people are going to have to learn the implications of that.
Shadowy people continue to have shadowy conversations in out-of-the-way locations. If anyone can make that look visually engaging, it’s Martin Simmonds. What could have easily been a bunch of talking heads turns out to be consideraly more than that visually as the series gets a bit more intense about being a bit more dramatic about the foundations of the series.
And there’s another conversation over coffee. (Tynion’s all about the coffee conversations...it’s...it’s kind of weird.) Department of Truth is a lot of coffee talk, which is strange enough to begin with...but then there’s the fact that Tyhnion and Simmonds do a damn fine job of binding those conversations to the page in a way that feels deeply engrossing. The ideal moment to read an issue of Department of Truth might actually be over coffee in the morning given how often it features as a vehicle for conversations that go on in the series. There’s really no other long-running series like it.
