The Department of Truth #23 Review: Facts as Guideposts for Fiction

The Department of Truth's return proves equal parts fascinating and frustrating.

By Christian Hoffer

The Department of Truth #23 begins to tell the story of Lee Harvey Oswald, although the comic's strange recurring theme of contorting real-world fact for its own fiction continues to be either brilliantly meta or astoundingly tone-deaf. After an 18-month hiatus, The Department of Truth returns for a new arc, this time promising to tell Oswald's true history, the notorious assassin of John F. Kennedy and the head of the modern-day propaganda department/reality-warping Department of Truth. With this issue, readers start to get a real sense of what Oswald's "true" motivations are in the comics and how one of America's most notorious assassins was placed in charge of utilizing metaphysical belief to keep the country at its forefront. 

The Department of Truth has always been a frustrating comic for me, largely because of its incomplete examination of conspiracy theories and their impact on human society. The Department of Truth treats conspiracy theories both reverently but also fails to examine their real world impact and the victims they often leave behind. We've seen time and time again, especially in recent years, how easily propaganda and distorted facts can corrode and destroy, but the comic book has never really committed to exploring the destruction conspiracy theories bring, nor does it examine the tainted seeds they grow from, usually driven by bigotry or malcontent. 

The usage of Lee Harvey Oswald is a fantastic case of the comic's paradoxical treatment of conspiracy theories. The real-life Oswald was a troubled man, a dissatisfied Marxist repeatedly court-martialed from the US Army who then attempted to defect to the Soviet Union. Oswald had already tried to kill a retired major general before he murdered Kennedy and he planned Kennedy's assassination for months. There is a preponderance of evidence showing Oswald killed Kennedy, but the question of why he did it remains unclear. That void in Oswald's story is the soil in which countless conspiracy theories have grown from. 

While the inclusion of Oswald in The Department of Truth wasn't surprising given that he was at the heart of one of the biggest questions in American history, it was curious how he was portrayed. Because of Oswald's history, his personality, motivations, and life have been scrutinized and examined by a thousand historians and psychologists. But instead of using those profiles to recreate Oswald, The Department of Truth has portrayed him as a gruff establishment-type, a preserver of the secret truth and one of the reasons why America enjoys its supposed exceptionalism. To be blunt, the comic has bastardized Oswald and turned him into the opposite of what he was. And at least during the first 22 issues of the series, there was never a clear hint as to whether the comic did so deliberately or simply to fill a need in the story, regardless as to whether the series was in essence peddling the same sort of embellishment it was supposedly rallying against. 

I'm glad The Department of Truth is finally getting around to telling Oswald's story, although I feel frustrated by how the arc opens. There's only the vaguest hint that creative understood who Oswald really was in this issue, instead choosing to rather joyously drag Frank Capra into its vague re-telling of history. Yes, Capra was a propogandist (he was probably one of the most successful in history), but the comic again seems to rest its laurels on knowing that fact rather than examining anything else about the director's life. At one point, the comic's version of Capra tells Oswald that he didn't found the Department of Truth "to fight a war," when the actual Capra tried to... twice. The actual Frank Capra was a fascinating person, one who effectively retired when the US government rejected him twice during the onset of the Korean War and went on to make science documentaries. But the comic's version of Capra instead hones in on one point and in essence erases the real Capra in place of a falsity sharing his name. 

But, here is what I find so frustrating about The Department of Truth. Is its treatment of Oswald or Capra or any other historical figure simply a demonstration of the core message of the comic? By utilizing these brazenly two-dimensional versions of complex human beings, is the comic simply showing that it can create its own truth by honing in on one point and simply rewriting the rest of that person's history and personality? If that's the true aim here, it's brilliant, really – a fascinating meta-narrative of sorts by depicting historical persons and placing them in roles that they would never willingly enter. And honestly, I'm still unsure of whether that's what the comic is doing, which is pretty impressive 23 issues in.

The Department of Truth is one of two things: it's either guilty of the very same thinning of the truth to craft a fictional narrative that it finds more pleasing, or it is in fact showing how easy it is to warp the truth by using the occasional fact as a guidepost for falsehood. While I suspect it's the former, the latter is why I'm glad that this comic book is back. It's time to see whether The Department of Truth is brilliant or exceedingly obtuse, with issue #23 being the first to begin peeling back the curtain. 

Published by Image Comics

On June 26, 2024

Written by James Tynion IV

Art by Martin Simmonds

Colors by Martin Simmonds

Letters by Aditya Bidikar

Cover by Martin Simmonds

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