In the world of wild conspiracy speculation, no historic event is more famous than that of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. While the most notable example might be Oliver Stone’s 1991 film JFK, a whole conspiracy theory cottage industry still surrounds the shooting today, with shirts, keychains, posters, “documentaries,” and books.
Issue #23 of James Tynion IV and Martin Simmonds’ conspiracy theory opus The Department of Truth finally addresses this as a core plot. Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who most people accept as JFK’s assassin, has been a recurring and main character throughout the series, but now we get a closer look at his back story.
“This is a story about the end of the world,” Oswald announces on page one. “It’s also my story … I have no idea how much of it is true and how much of it isn’t.” The idea that Oswald himself isn’t even sure what’s true and what isn’t gives a nod and wink to the ongoing obfuscation around JFK’s assassination. One could easily imagine a world in which, had the real Oswald lived, he too might be uncertain about what really happened.
Department of Truth #23 touches on a lot of the actual events of the assassination. We see Dealey Plaza and its now-infamous landmarks: the Texas School Book Depository and the Grassy Knoll. We see Abraham Zapruder and his camera, a cheering crowd awaiting the President, and a child who catches a glimpse of Oswald with his rifle. But there also really is a man on the Grassy Knoll, just in case Oswald can’t get the job done.
“I thought I had to kill the President of the United States in order to save everything I had dedicated my young life to building,” Oswald says in the present, before the story flashes back to 1958, when he was (fictionally) approached by a mysterious man who told him that America is a story, “Something we’re all telling each other. But there are moments, big moments, where a story can change.” We’re seeing more allusions to the concept of historical revision that so many conspiracy theorists seek to enact.
Image Comics
There are many conspiratorial views of JFK’s assassination, which run from the simple to the absolutely bizarre. The most popular is the idea presented in Stone’s film, that all of the three letter agencies (CIA, FBI, etc.) were in on it, orchestrating the assassination or covering it up. Another is that a Secret Service agent, while trying to keep up with the motorcade on foot, accidentally fired the shot. One of the stranger conspiracy theories says that if you look closely at the Zapruder footage, you can see that it was actually JFK’s wife, Jackie, who shot him.
This was presented by a (now-defunct) YouTube channel which walked the viewer through how Jackie “pulled it off.” The people behind the channel were basically saying that the real culprit was hiding in plain sight all along, but the Mandela Effect erased our memories of it. Of course, you can use suggestive narration with cherry-picked images to make an argument for just about anything.
“There is an opportunity now to tell a very good story. A better story,” the mysterious man said to Oswald. “If I do this right, it will be the best story I ever tell. A story that will reshape the world into what it should be.”
The man speaking to Oswald is confirmed later in Department of Truth #23 to be Italian-American filmmaker Frank Capra, who made a series of propaganda films called Why We Fight for the Army during World War II, which were meant to explain to American soldiers what the point of the conflict was. Capra’s appearance includes his explanation of the great secrets hidden from the common man, that “collective belief shapes the world. That the more people believe something, the truer it becomes. No matter how strange or unlikely the belief.”
Image Comics
Capra is the first director of the Department of Truth, in the business of storytelling, and isn’t that ultimately what conspiracy theories are? They’re a flawed way to make sense of a seemingly nonsensical and confusing world.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login