TheDepartment of Truth #1 opens on November 22, 1963, the fateful day in Dallas when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated with Martin Simmonds’ artwork evoking fuzzy video coverage like shots of cryptids or a second shooter on that grassy knoll. As the comic progresses, Simmonds’ visuals and James Tynion IV’s larger premise for the series come into sharper focus, but in the end, there are still more questions than answers. And, honestly, that’s what you want out of an ongoing monthly comic, especially one driven by conspiracies within conspiracies within, well, conspiracies.
A key reason that I enjoyed TheDepartment of Truth #1 was Martin Simmonds’ art. He marries grid layouts with the fully painted art style of Duncan Fegredo and Paul Johnson’s work in the early 1990s or even the panache of David Mack and Bill Sienkiewicz. However, it’s not just pretty pictures or cool compositions but has motion and storytelling weight too. Simmonds can also be a vicious caricaturist, like in his drawing of the Flat Earth Society members that match the dry, snarky narration that Tynion writes for the protagonist, Cole.
You can tell he doesn’t have a high opinion of most of these characters, and it drives his line art and color palette to new heights like a blood red composition of a couple of rich, conspiracy-mongering assholes through Cole’s shades. Everything is more memorable from the perspective of sunglasses, and that goes for both film and comics. Martin Simmonds’ layout choices match the story’s pace with lots of small, skinny panels during interrogation sequences to big splashes for reveals or when he and Tynion want to touch on a big picture theme. I enjoyed Martin Simmonds’ work on the Punks Not Dead comics for IDW as well as his fill-in issue of Immortal Hulk, but Department of Truth is a true level up for him as a cartoonist with him crossing into Sienkiewicz-esque territory with his depiction of corruption, deceit, and maybe once or twice, truth.
Unlike the 1990s when conspiracy theories seemed fun and quirky (Think X-Files.), they have become scarier thanks to folks like QAnon, who bundle their outlandishness and useless misdirection with plenty of white supremacy and anti-Semitism. Tynion is aware of that and bakes in conspiracy’s current right-wing nature while also making references to its let’s say, cuddlier, past starting with the JFK assassination. This conflict and need for finding a happy medium feeds into the book’s underlying theme and also makes it seem more relevant with characters popping up that you might Google to see if they’re not some obscure far-right commentator on one of those websites or premium cable news channels that make Fox almost seem (Emphasis on the almost) fair and balanced. While the plot begins to unfold and the premise is established, James Tynion and Martin Simmonds also delve into the mindset of the conspiracy theorist, and why it’s so attractive. Think Grant Morrison’s Invisibles, but in the age of Pizzagate and 8chan.
TheDepartment of Truth #1 is an engaging debut issue with James Tynion tapping into the expansive worldbuilding of his previous titles like Memetic and its sequels while Martin Simmonds shows that painted art can have a few, new tricks up its sleeves in 2020. They also introduce some actually compelling mysteries and tap into our fearful zeitgeist where believers and spinners of harmful conspiracies have entirely too much power.
Story: James Tynion IV Art: Martin SimmondsLetters: Aditya Bidikar Story: 8 Art: 9 Overall: 8.5 Recommendation: Buy
Image Comics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review
In a jam packed episode of Comics Deserve Better, Brian, Darci, and Logan discuss the latest indie comics news, including Valiant’s move to L.A., Peter Milligan’s new comic for Ahoy, and comics used as tools of democratic activism in Thailand. But the main topic of the podcast is the YA LGBTQ+ comic masterpiece Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me, and some of us get a little personal in chatting about this beautiful story of friendship, romance, growing up, and toxic relationships. Other comics mentioned on the show include Gideon Falls, Adler, and Mega Man: Fully Charged as well as the Source Point Press titles Bug Bites and Burning Tree.
In this episode of Comics Deserve Better, Brian, Darci, and Logan discuss cartoonist Kate Leth‘s pattern of racism, transphobia, and fatphobia. Logan shares some of his personal experiences with Leth, and this is very much editorial and not news reporting. Next, they talk about some great indie comics like Undone by Blood, Helena Rose, “Checking Out” from Medium, and the Manga Classics series as well as upcoming titles like Black Mask Studios‘ The Last Song #3 and The Impending Blindness of Billie Scott.
Finally, his week’s “Main Course” is Matt Kindt and Matt Smith‘s fantasy series Folklords, which leads to a hearty debate among the hosts and many Tolkien references. (Episode art by Jeff Smith)
Thanks to their work on titles like Criminal, The Fade Out, Kill or Be Killed, and many others, writer Ed Brubaker and artist Sean Philips’ collaborations have been some of my favorite comics to seek out on the stands. And their new Image Comics graphic novella, Pulp, is no exception. Set in New York in 1939 with occasional flashbacks to the turn of the 20th century, Pulp chronicles the last days of Max Winters, an Old West gun fighter and outlaw turned writer of pulp Westerns for the fictional magazine Six Gun Western. Brubaker and Phillips with amazing spot reds from colorist Jacob Phillips blur fact and fiction and show and steadily build up that Winters’ character, the Red River Kid, is a barely fictionalized version of his younger self.
While Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips riff on crime fiction tropes in their usual manner and add a dollop of the “one last job” story, I would consider Pulp to be a straight Western even though it’s predominantly set in New York. This mostly comes from the way Max behaves, especially in crime settings. (Car chases are definitely more stressful than horse ones.) However, Brubaker and Phillips aren’t merely content to do their take on this classic American staple of the Western, but instead recontextualize the genre to be about resistance against those who would exploit others (Basically, class warfare.), especially Nazis and fascists.
They lay the breadcrumbs for this early on as Max stands up for a young Jewish man at the subway station even though it leads to him getting his ass kicked, having a heart attack, and being robbed of his entire freelance paycheck that he was squirreling away to buy a house in Queens for him and his partner, Rosa. This scene sets up Max as a champion of the marginalized as Phillips and Phillips’ visuals convey the righteous fury in his soul as he stands up for what’s right even if no one helps him out when he takes a beating. The fury extends to the salty frankness of his dialogue as he tells the young anti-Semite, stating “Everyone here’s had enough of your crap”. Max is like if Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven had a social conscience, and this informs all of his actions in the narrative, especially in the second half of the book when he decides to fall in with an old foe. And not just any old enemy: a Pinkerton.
Even though they had semi-heroic beginnings as bodyguards for President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War, Pinkertons become synonymous with strike-breaking and cloak and dagger operations to uphold the status quo. Historically, they tracked down the Jesse James Gang and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid so they’re a good fit for baddies in a Western and are still doing private security to this day as part of the firm, Securitas AB. So, basically, Brubaker and Phillips set up the former Pinkerton, Goldman, who catches Max trying to do a robbery in broad daylight as an untrustworthy fellow with a bit of a bitter edge. Sean Phillips never draws Max and Goldman as buddy buddy arranging them in opposition to each other with Goldman as a savvy operator and Max as a cowboy stuck in city alleys instead of the open plains of Wyoming or another Western state.
This visual depiction extends to Ed Brubaker’s plot as what Max thinks is just good old-fashioned stage coach robbery (But with Nazis instead of cattle barons.) turns into something a little more complex as Goldman wants to hit at the names and accounts of Nazis, not just their cash. Of course, Max thinks this is all nonsense, and his captions the 1939 Old West gun fighter version of ACAB. (“Why would I trust a Pinkerton?”) However, Brubaker and Phillips drop in Goldman’s backstory that he had a good job doing accounting work for Henry and was laid off because he was Jewish, which makes him more of a sympathetic figure, and also sets up Max’s final showdown where he takes guns a-blazing vengeance against the fascists and on behalf of his Jewish partner, who was wrongfully murdered, even though he (and we) know that this will end in his demise. But he has that house in Queens for Rosa so he has nothing left to lose.
For better or worse, Max’s actions in both the Western past and New York present of Pulp are consistent. He always fights on behalf of folks that are exploited by those who have the power in society whether that’s settlers and robber barons or Jewish people and Nazis. He even advocates for ownership of his character Red River Kid (Pretty much self-ownership.) and going in a new creative direction with the character instead of retreading the same plots, but as anyone who has read about the history of comics that’s a futile battle. There’s a real Martin Goodman/Stan Lee vibe from Max’s editor Mort and his nephew Sidney, who’s a fan of Max’s Westerns and will do his job for a much cheaper rate. These scenes and Max’s sense of justice lead to more anger and chest pains and is what leads to him to picking up gun again and becoming an outlaw.
In Pulp, Brubaker and Phillips create a strong through-line between the exploitation of capitalists and fascists whose actions are insulated by people “just following orders”. Max is very aware of the banality of evil, and that’s why his final showdown is at German Bund beer hall and not against a veiled stand-in for Adolf Hitler atop a zeppelin. He has put his affairs in order, has set up his partner Rosa for life, just wants to avenge the death of his unlikely friend, Goldman, and put some goddamn Nazis six feet under. Sean Phillips and Jacob Phillips up the intensity of the visuals in these final pages with plenty of guns, red, and abstraction while Ed Brubaker’s narration sums up what Max thinks of himself before his death, namely, “We weren’t heroes. We were killers.” Even though Max has good values, it was his quick trigger finger that kept him alive in the Old West, and it’s deteriorating heart that gets him in the end in a bar in New York surrounded by swastikas. But, at least, he went down shooting.
Pulp is a fantastic transposition of the Western to the big, modern city as Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips apply outlaw-turned-pulp-writer code of fighting for the downtrodden to championing Jewish people against fascism even before the United States declared war on Nazi Germany. Max’s actions and ideals strike a chord in 2020 where the President of the United States himself called Nazis and white supremacists “very fine people”, and they run rampant both in the street and online. With his vulnerability, tenacity, soft spot for Rosa, and heart for justice, Max Winters is definitely the character find of 2020, and Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, and Jacob Phillips do a wonderful job making a Western story both exciting and socially relevant.
In this episode of Comics Deserve Better, Brian, Darci, and Logan gush over the first arc of Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen‘s 2015 space opera comic, Descender. Stay tuned for chatter about small robots, big robots, and great watercolor art. Other comics mentioned on the show, include Robert Kirkman and Chris Samnee‘s blockbuster Fire Power, self-published darlings Post and Stella vs. the Tinder Box, Tom Taylor and Daniele Di Nicuolo‘s Seven Secrets, Evan Dahm‘s Harrowing of Hell, and more. (Episode art by Dustin Nguyen)
In this week’s Comic Deserve Better, Brian, Darci, and Logan discuss Fábio Moon, Gabriel Bá‘, and Dave Stewart‘s life and death masterpiece, Daytripper, and get emotional and occasionally personal while breaking down the craft of this great title. They also chat about a plethora of recent indie releases ranging from Singaporean newspaper comics about Covid-19 and self-published comics about going to movie theaters (Remember those!) to Vault Comics‘ Finger Guns, Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips‘ Pulp, and the manga, Yona of the Dawn. There’s something for everyone in this episode! (Episode art by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá.)
The White Wolf/Onyx Path RPG Vampire: the Masqueradereturns to comics courtesy of Vault, and this issue is a wonderful entry point into a complex world of alliances, hierarchies, and yes, bloodthirst. Tim Seeley, Devmalya Pramanik, and Addison Duke handle the lead story of Vampire: the Masquerade #1 focusing on Cecily Bain, who is muscle for a vampire clan in Minneapolis. However, she also has a fiercely independent streak and the tiniest trace of a soft side beneath her murderous, take no shit attitude. On the flip side is Tini Howard, Blake Howard, and Nathan Gooden’s backup story about the anarch, Colleen, who isn’t beholden to the Twin Cities power struggle and just wants to make sure her and her vampire buddies survive to the next day. It was really nice to get two incredibly different perspectives on this rich world, especially as a newcomer to the franchise. (My only real exposure to Vampire the Masquerade was in the Baphomet/Morrigan-centric issue of WicDiv even though the lore has always fascinated, and I picked up some of the RPG sourcebooks via Humble Bundle.)
Seeley and Pramanik set up Cecily as an anti-hero with a heart of gold in Vampire: the Masquerade #1’s opening story. She proves her ruthlessness by killing the clan accountant’s girlfriend (He’s just valuable enough.) in the opening scene, but then she shows tenderness with her sister Karen, who has dementia, and a new vampire, Ali. Pramanik with the help of colorist Addison Duke uses intense shadows to create intimacy in their visuals and hint that Cecily is strongly considering turning Karen into a vampire so she doesn’t have to deal with the pain of completely losing her and also that her youth is restored.
This concern for the weak continues to Ali, who was sired by an anonymous vampire and is clan-less drifter in a highly hierarchical world except this may not be the case thanks to some suspenseful silent sequences from Seeley and Pramanik. Visually, Devmalya Pramanik and Addison Duke lean into an industrial, post-punk vibe that hints at past “glory days” for Cecily and Karen and also hinting that Cecily might have a sense of nostalgia between her tough, get the job done veneer. Her interest in alternative culture and music does dovetail nicely with her refusal to be more of a company woman and just do her job for the Prince instead of getting the vampire clan equivalent of a desk job and lose some of her precious freedom. (And, by extension, a lack of prying eyes on Karen.)
In both stories, Tim Seeley, Tini Howard, and Blake Howard lean on characterization and easy-to-connect-with personal relationships instead of the deep Vampire the Masquerade lore to drive the story. Without the vampirism, Colleen and her band of anarchs (Basically, vampire without a cause.) could be young people with wanderlust that favor the open road instead of stable jobs and lifestyles. The character sheet for Colleen (And Cecily too, while we’re here.) adds real depth to her character and the messed up relationship with her husband/sire Mitch and also acts as a rare peek at the bottom of the author’s theoretical iceberg. The backup is a free spirit to the rigid structures that Cecily encounters in the main story, and Addison Duke uses a lighter palette because as a thin blood, Colleen can actually go out during the day. The Howards and Gooden’s story adds depth and perspective via a momentum-filled On the Road with vampires plotline instead of relying on boring exposition to show what life as another kind of vampire is like.
With two memorable leads and a focus on showing readers what it’s like in the universe instead of exhaustively explaining its rules, Vampire: the Masquerade #1 is an enjoyable read even if you’re not familiar with the RPG. The dual nature of immortality shows up a lot in the comic, but Tim Seeley, Tini Howard, Blake Howard, Devmalya Pramanik, Nathan Gooden, and basically Gothic set-dresser Addison Duke dive into other implications of being a vampire in this world like navigating bureaucracies and complicated interpersonal relationship. Hey, it sounds like the real world, but with hotter outfits, blood, and fangs.
Story: Tim Seeley, Tini Howard, Blake Howard Art: Devmalya Pramanik, Nathan Gooden Colors: Addison Duke Letters: Andworld Story: 7.9 Art: 8.7 Overall: 8.5 Recommendation: Buy
Vault provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review
In the second episode of Comics Deserve Better, Brian, Darci, and Logan react to the 2020 Eisners and discuss the 2017 Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernandez comic, The Old Guard. Or what Logan likes to call “Blackwater, but queer”.
Other books talked about on the show include the webcomics Fangs by Sarah Andersen, Gunnerkrigg Court by Tom Siddell, and Clover and Nugget by Phil Sheldon as well as Scout Comics‘ Yasmeen #1and Tales from the Pandemic by Mario Candelaria and a bunch of awesome artists.
Coming off his work on Fantastic Four Grand Design as judging by his art style and themes in comics like Super Powers, Godland, and American Barbarian, cartoonist Tom Scioli is an excellent choice to write, draw, color, and letter a graphic biography of Jack Kirby, who co-created Captain America, Hulk, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, New Gods, and characters too numerous to mention. In Jack Kirby: The Epic Life of the King of Comics, Scioli tells the story of Kirby’s life using a first-person narrative device drawing on a backlog of interviews and magazine articles about him while occasionally shifting the narrator to his beloved wife, Roz Kirby, and his collaborator/rival/general pain in the ass, Stan Lee to show their sides of Kirby’s life.
The main takeaway I got from Jack Kirby: The Epic Life of the King of Comics was that his life and vivid imagination were almost always linked, and Scioli shows this by drawing Kirby wide-eyed, almost like Astro Boy compared to his more realistic portrayals of the characters around him. There ends up being a big, emotional payoff to this technique, and it’s interesting to see Scioli’s art style shift with the time that Kirby was living in from the classic adventure and humor strips that took him away from gloomy New York to the power and pain of his war days where he escaped death so many times. This is followed up by the chameleon days of the 1950s where Kirby and Joe Simon tried to keep up with the latest trends in the industry like crime and Westerns and even invented a new one: romance, the 1960s where Kirby turned monsters into superheroes and created pop culture icons, the 1970s where he was freed from dialogue balloon fillers-in and could create a new mythology that was both epic and personal.
Finally, the story concludes in Kirby’s twilight years where he finally got things like health insurance and paid days off to take a trip to Israel with Roz and spend more time with his family while working in animation, getting royalties for his New Gods characters, and getting his greatest paycheck yet when the Image Comics founders inked some of his old, unpublished art to create Phantom Force. After Kirby’s death, Scioli does away with his usual six panel grid and uses smaller screens with photorealistic drawings of everything from Frank Miller eulogizing him to photorealistic style panels of stills from movies from 2000’s X-Men to the upcoming Eternals and New Gods, which draw almost solely from his vision.
But for every great idea or creation, there’s a reversal with Jack Kirby spending as much time in heated arguments in offices and occasionally court rooms as at the drawing board creating stories and worlds. However, Tom Scioli spends plenty of time showing Jack Kirby in the act of penciling or plotting comics drawing on everything from a documentary about Easter Island to the personality differences between conniving Stan Lee and affable Larry Lieber (Who was huge fan of Kirby’s Captain America as a kid) to develop the first bad guys in Journey into Mystery (And later, Thor.) as well as the relationship between Thor, Loki, and Odin. From early pages where Kirby is sprawled out with the full color Sunday comics section on his building’s fire escape, Scioli portrays him as sponge for stories and pop culture of all kinds, especially mythology and speculative fiction.
Instead of being a nerd and hoarding comics or toys in his room, Kirby combined these rich stories with his experiences as a member of a youth gang in New York or as a soldier in World War II to create stories that are both relatable and full of wonder even if a few like Stuntman and True Divorce Stories didn’t get made or got less hype than Captain America or Fantastic Four. Every movie, conversation, or story told to him became fodder for Kirby’s own work, and those around him realize this before him. For example, in the 1970s, DC Comics wanted him to do a horror story in the vein of Swamp Thing, which wasn’t his favorite genre, so after a pep talk from his assistants Mark Evanier and Steve Sherman, he created Etrigan the Demonby riffing off a scene in Prince Valiant where the protagonist disguises himself as one. Scioli’s grid darts from inspiration or conversation to penciled page and then success. (Or sometimes failure) However, that success is undercut by the exploitation that is a running theme throughout the comic, and it’s almost cathartic when the Ruby-Spears animators treat Kirby reverently as he works on the Thundarr the Barbarian cartoon.
Tom Scioli’s most visually compelling sequences in Jack Kirby are the portrayal of his war days where he acted as a scout going through enemy territory and using his talents that he previously lent to Captain America or Boy Commandos to maps of Nazi positions. There’s the uncertainty of the early days of training in Georgia and hiding out in buildings in France before being immediately drawn into combat during the heady post D-Day battles. Scioli’s bright or neutral palette goes dark or red as he realizes that his unit is basically on a suicide mission, and this tension continues to Kirby’s days as a scout with lots of lots of scarlet when he kills Nazis with a knife taken from an SS officer. It’s not dynamic and powerful like Jack Kirby’s superhero action stories; it’s just war. Kirby was just fighting to stay alive for another day and get home to see his wife, Roz. The most searing scene of all is when Kirby helps liberate a concentration camp, and Scioli draws a survivor like a living skeleton.
Kirby’s resistance towards fascism from basically telling the German American Bund that he would beat their asses if they showed up at Timely’s (Later Marvel) offices before World War II to his actions during the war and finally through some of his comics like Nick Fury and The Losers, which were based on his military service and the Fourth World saga, which was about freedom and resisting tyranny on a larger more epic level that would influence later creators like George Lucas. (Jack and Roz Kirby watching Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back together in theaters is one of the comic’s most smile inducing moments.) These Star Wars sequences are one of many ways that Tom Scioli looks at the bigger picture of the comics industry, pop culture, and current events to add background color and context to Jack Kirby’s life and work. For example, a depiction of JFK’s assassination immediately bleeds into Mr. Fantastic lying as if dead on the ground as part of Kirby’s big Hulk vs Thing epic in Fantastic Four. He immediately turned his emotions about this tragic event into great art.
In a more of an inside baseball way (And honestly, the comics industry of the Golden and Silver Ages is begging to be turned into a Mad Men-esque prestige TV show.), Tom Scioli traces the relationships between Jack Kirby and various comics industry figures over the years. Obviously, Stan Lee takes up most of the space, but there are also some smaller moments like Kirby having a friendly relationship with Bob Kane as yet another freelancer for the Eisner/Iger studio to seeing him as arrogant and obnoxious or the tension between him and his various inkers like Vince Colletta (Who showed his DC pages to Marvel staffers), Mike Royer (Who drew Big Barda like Cher and got chewed out), and Joe Sinnott (Who shows up for one panel with Kirby and a Thing cosplayer). Tom Scioli is interested in both the art and commerce side of making comics, and it shines through the loving touches he gives to both Kirby at his drawing table and Kirby in a shouting match with Stan Lee about credits on their books. His prose is zippy, and Jack Kirby’s dry as a bone humor comes out in his dialogue.
Jack Kirby: The Epic Life of the King of Comics is a carefully crafted, appreciative feast of a biographical comic. Tom Scioli cites his sources in the back but focuses more on trying to get in the mind of Jack Kirby and think about how he would react to everything from his parents’ deaths to another guy trying to date Roz or even Stan Lee trying to slyly steal his Mister Miracle concept art to use in Fantastic Four. With Kirby’s expressive eyes as a kind of spirit guide, the book is a heartbreaking, yet empowering experience, and by the end of the book, I thought that not only would this website not exist without Jack Kirby, that I probably wouldn’t either. And now I’m off to actually finish his Fourth World saga!
Story: Tom ScioliArt: Tom Scioli Story: 9.0 Art: 10.0 Overall: 9.5 Recommendation: Buy
Graphic Policy contributor Logan Dalton, Darci Meadville, and Brian Stafford have teamed up for the new podcast “Comics Deserve Better.”
The podcast focuses on indie comics (non-Big Two), non-licensed comics, and news.
The first episode is available now and discusses the memoir/road trip story American Dream? by Malaysian-American non-binary cartoonist Shing Yin Khor.
You can listen to it on Anchor, Spotify, or right here below!
