Secrets are different in the comics world.
I worked for five years at Random House Children’s Books, and while it’s not as if every prose project is common knowledge from day one (Book of Dust was on our internal schedule for years before it became a real thing and was revealed to the masses), it’s much more common for deals to at least get announced before going hush-hush for 18 months.
For a multitude of reasons, comics typically asks creators to labor in secret until three months shy of release date. I was the last component added to this book’s team, and I’ve had my lips sealed for almost a year at this point. Now, thanks to this lovely exclusive reveal on EW.com, I can finally announce that I’m editing The Department of Truth, an ongoing Image Comics series written by James Tynion IV, illustrated by Martin Simmonds, lettered by Aditya Bidikar, and designed by Dylan Todd.
As James so eloquently phrases it for EW, DoT is about “about the truths America wants to see about itself, and the ones it does not.” The catchy short pitch for the book is that it takes place in a world where every conspiracy theory you’ve ever heard is true: faked moon landings, JFK’s assassination, the Satanic Panic, lizard people, all of it. That’s not misleading, exactly, but it’s not the complete scope of the story, either. (You’ll need to pick up a copy on September 30th to discover that).
If for some awful reason you’re not already a recipient of James’s mostly weekly newsletter, rectify that here and you’ll get more details on DoT and some other exciting projects I may or may not have a hand in, as well…
For now, I can only offer my immense gratitude to James for inviting me onto the project, and for Martin, Aditya, and Dylan for having me. Every member of this team is doing career-best work, which is saying something when they’re all so prolific and already have such impressive titles under their belts. It feels odd to call the current writer of Batman a “rising” talent, but James is my age in an industry that still skews about a decade or more up from us, and Department of Truth feels like an important step in the “rising” class of comic creators really taking their irrefutable seats at the table.
(It’s not conceited for me to say that—I’m just the editor.)
You’ll be hearing a lot more about this book in the coming months, as well as other ~secret~ projects that will finally see the light of day in the not-too-distant future. Until then, enjoy Martin’s stunning artwork and this delightfully ominous Jenny Frison(!) variant cover for The Department of Truth #1.
