The Department of Truth Volume 02: The City Upon a Hill
James Tynion IV, writer; Martin Simmonds, artist; Aditya Bidikar, letterer
Image Comics, 2021
In this second installment Cole (still trying to wrap his mind around a world that has the Department of Truth in it) meets a long-term operative named Hawk Turner. Hawk is a spooky character who describes himself as "the magic man of the D.O.T." He has been behind the fixing of some big manifestations--and it turns out that his story is entwined in Cole's. He was the government agent who visited the child Cole and his family after Cole reported his contact with the evil star-faced man. Having decided that national paranoia about a monstrous Satanic child abuser would be useful, Hawk began engineering it, only to pull the plug after realizing a manifested star-faced man would kill children for real.
Back in the present he walks Cole through the history of magic, religion and mysticism, which leads to things called Tulpas: thoughtforms, an externalized manifestation of something inside the mind. They then go on an extended hunt for Bigfoot, a classic contemporary Tulpa. The story centers around one family, whose experience is documented in the form of handwritten illustrated diary entries, a further experiment in a comic that is already visually experimental (at times recalling both David Mack and Bill Sienkiewicz). Back at the origin of Cole's childhood visions, Hawk reveals that he has been working with D.O.T. nemesis Black Hat for years. He is convinced that the Lee Harvey Oswald running D.O.T. is not the actual man of that name, but a Tulpa embodying the shadowy idea of an assassin that was spreading in the press at the time. Cole now has deep knowledge that he lacked before, and choices to make.
Replies