The Department of Truth #31 // Review
“You can call me Frank,” she says exhaling a stream of tobacco smoke. It’s what people call her online. It’s what her best friend calls her at school. Right now she’s not talking to her friend, though. Right now she’s talking to The X-Files. Only this isn’t the X-Files. It’s The Department of Truth #31. Writer James Tynion IV opens a new story arc in his ongoing series with the impressively-rendered visuals of emerging Italian artist Letizia Cadonici. Tynion explores the world of internet truth, urban legend and creepypasta in a promising opening to a whole new story with a deeply appealing new character.
Frank is a high school girl who has been communicating with a girl online named Bobbie. It was a late night when Bobbie invited Frank to come over to her place. Only thing is: she wasn’t there. There was a note on her desk, though. The same sentence over and over and over again: “Don’t think of the hat man.” Frank’s freaked out by the whole thing, so she asks her best friend Bill about it the next day at school. She’s going to ask him about the Hat Man thing. He’s going to tell her. And then she’s going to tell “The X-Files.”
On the surface, it’s a pretty simple and relatively un-engaging sort of a story. The complexity lurking just below the surface of the narrative makes it one of the more brilliant stories to have hit The Department of Truth. Tynion was going to eventually have to dive into the world of creepypasta in a big way if he was going to keep walking through the fringes of popular consciousness in the series. The nature of truth becomes increasingly deliciously blurred in a story that involves one story telling another in a world of shifting realities. Fun stuff.
Martin Simmonds’ art has been a perfect synch for the shadowy world that Tynion is exploring, but it can be a lot of fun seeing a different artist dive-in and explore the world. Cadonici’s art is a perfect fit for Frank and her world. Candonici beautifully renders the shifting emotional life of a disaffected high school girl. There’s a symphony of subtlety playing out in Candonici’s rendering of Frank. It’s really, really difficult to render a relatively reserved emotional presence on the comics page. Candonici does a very sharp job of that in a gorgeous opening issue for the new story arc.
Between Simmonds and Condinici’s work, Frank comes across as one of the more appealing characters to have slid onto page and panel with The Department of Truth. If the series keeps going long-term, it’d be really cool to see her become a regular part of the ensemble. She inhabits a portion of the world that no one else quite fits into. It’d be a real disappointment if she were to simply shuffle-off the panel at the end of the current story and never show-up again. It would be SUCH a better series with her as a part of the DOT.
