From James Tynion IV, Martin Simmonds, Image Comics.

Highly recommended for me to read and I’m only now finally getting around to this. Maybe that was fate stepping in. This first issue is messed up and every hint says it will only get screwier. I don’t know if I could have read this, oh, say, before the first week of November. This comic is crazy fantasy but all too close to reality at the same time. Scary close.

To grossly simplify without giving too much away: If enough people believe in an idea, no matter how crazy that idea is, it will come true. Think Flat Earthers. Or any other conspiracy that has come along. The Department of Truth exists to put a stop to any ideas like that before they rewrite reality.

In the real world we are witnessing people throw away science and decades if not centuries of facts because they don’t agree with it. Them or their equally uninformed friends spout their own reality. I’ve said it elsewhere, previously crazy people like this rang their bells and handed out pamphlets that were thrown out and ignored on the next block over. Now, every one of those voices is amplified by social media. Every voice can be given equal access to the same platform and there are no editors to delete the kooks before they get out of hand.

I can’t go into details of the first issue because it does bring up some of the more well known and debated conspiracies. Some it even gives answers to, only to create more questions. It is mind opening, and scary, and demands money set aside for the next issue.

This is helped immensely by the crazy art. Why does this remind of a 1990’s Topps X-Files comic? Every panel is detailed but scratchy. Realistic but other worldly. I feel like my left eye and right eye are looking at two different comics and trying to overlay them in a way that can make sense to my brain. I’ve had many writers throw me into the deep end of the pool but I can’t think of another time where an artist did the same.

This title will probably come up again this year. At the latest, when the first issues are collected into a graphic novel. There are so many screwed up things that we can prove, it almost makes it easier to believe the more ridiculous ones. I’m hoping a comic like this not only entertains but also helps me to keep a grasp of what is and is not true.