It’s Moscow. It’s 1991. A U.S. agent is having a few words with a Russian at a McDonald’s. It’s nothing that couldn’t have actually happened. Of course...the fact that the American happens to be Lee Harvey Oswald is a bit out of place given the year. Things are going to be a bit strange. This is The Department of Truth #18. Writer James Tynion IV continues his exploration into darkness and relativity in another issue brought hauntingly to the page by Martin Simmonds. The plot doesn’t thicken so much as...coagulate with heavy doses of drama that are casually highlighted in shadowy illustration. 

Grigori assumes that Lee has come to gloat. It’s not hard to understand why. The United States has emerged victorious from the Cold War. The two are meeting in a McDonald’s, for Christ’s sake. Things aren’t as they seem, though... both men know that much. Later on, Cole Turner is waking-up in bed with his husband. There’s a growing distance between the two of them. Cole doesn’t know how to patch the distance. There’s too much he can’t say about work. SO he confides in a conversation over breakfast with a coworker. Then the day really starts. Things get...complicated. 

There’s a whole lot of eating going on in this issue. McDonald’s with Lee in Moscow in 1989. Breakfast of waffles and coffee with Cole in the present day. The chapter wraps up with drinks. Conversation overconsumption. It’s an exciting motif given the fact that so much of what is being talked about in Tynion’s script involves people feeding things to other people. People will eat what they have to. The conversation works well as drama, but it takes a really sharp visual mind to make it feel engaging on a comic book page. 

Thankfully, Simmonds manages another compelling visual presentation of Tynion’s writing. The depth of what Tynion is going into might normally work a lot better in narrative prose format, but the darkness in Simmonds’ visuals adds impact and punctuation with murky, shadowy visuals that drip slowly across the page in ambient intensity. Lee flashes eyes like Old Glory in Moscow in 1989. Later on, there’s a vision of a feast of infants over drinks between Cole and a few others. A corpse rests at the feet of an Apollo spacecraft in a museum. There’s more than enough darkness to keep the pages turning. 

Heavy conversations between people who know more about current events and the truth? This tends to be the type of thing that works better with actors. In the course of the 18 issues of the series, Tynion, Simmonds, and company have solidly delivered a story that has a very distinct pulse and mood that wouldn’t feel quite right in any other format. Adapted for stage, screen, or podcast, Department of Truth wouldn’t quite have the same resonance it does on the comics page. A great deal of that has to do with Simmonds’ specific vision, which works quite well in the 18th issue of the series.

Grade: A