Review by Frank Plowright
If the USA has a department aware that a fantasy believed by enough people can literally become the truth, it makes sense that the Soviet Union back in the day also had a department intending to control their version of the truth. Mentioned in passing during Free Country, James Tynion IV and Martin Simmonds run with the thought in Ministry of Lies.
That’s a clever title, although Tynion never addresses the philosophical matter of whether truth or lies have relevance in a world where actuality can be altered, but several other existential matters are on the agenda. Rather than taking the obvious Cold War route, Tynion picks up in 1991 when the Soviet Union has dissolved, before jumping back to the present day, and he makes the valid point that the Cold War might not have been pleasant, but there was a certainty about who the enemy was. As if on cue, 2022’s reality subverted Tynion’s contention that the lack of that certainty has left us all thrashing around.
As seen on the sample art, Martin Simmonds distinguishes the past as another country by showing it through a veil of visual static. It’s an extremely unsettling effect, more so digitally than on the printed page, which of course is the intention. Simmonds doesn’t deal in realism per se, but can produce a fine portrait, and a highlight throughout has been the scratchy symbolism, with the stars and stripes twisted into all manner of horrors.
One of the least convincing aspects of the series to date has been Cole’s relationship with his husband Matty, offering little comfort and strained domestic angst in a series in which the angst overspills and at many levels above. However, there’s been a reason all along, and it pays off spectacularly well in a chickens come home to roost manner, while a chapter on how the relationship started is well placed, providing some quiet joy and the horror of hindsight. What follows is being thrown in at the deep end.
Free Country was a collection of background material, although a strong one, but previous collection A City Upon a Hill dealing with the primary narrative had the feeling of the way being lost. Ministry of Lies drags everything back on track extremely satisfyingly, and sets up some possibilities to anticipate in the next volume. Unfortunately, though, while the official line is that The Department of Truth doesn’t end here, Image’s history is littered with stalled projects about which that’s been said. So far it’s been well over a year with no announcement of continuation. What a shame. Or is the truth being with-held?
