Publication files
Issues, arcs, and collections
The numbered sequence remains the clearest route through the series, while arc and collection records trace how individual chapters assemble into longer arguments about history, power, and belief.
58 recordsIndividual issues
Spoiler-complete summaries, chronology, consequences, credits, and publication evidence for issue #0 and issues #1–#38.
The Department of Truth #0
“Another National Anthem” introduces Hunter Hill, Charity Sinclair, and a new generation of Department recruits; “Suspicious Minds” follows Lee in 1955 and 1977 as American identity becomes an institutional weapon.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #1
Cole Turner’s investigation at a flat-Earth convention leads to his first encounter with the hidden conflict over reality.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #2
Cole Turner enters the Department’s casework and confronts the lasting reality of the Satanic Panic.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #3
Mary Todd receives impossible evidence that her son survived a school shooting, forcing the Department to choose between containment and grief.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #4
The Department studies Black Hat’s attempt to join separate conspiracies into one weaponized history.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #5
Martin Barker challenges Cole with a Black Hat history of the Department and the political meaning of November 22, 1963.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #6
Lee Harvey Oswald survives his public shooting while an older Department archive opens a dispute over medieval time and history.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #7
Cole and Lee examine Men in Black folklore, UFO witnesses, and the difference between an experience and the explanation attached to it.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #8
Hawk investigates a Milwaukee preschool panic while Black Hat turns familiar conspiracy imagery into an operational environment.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #9
Cole and Hawk test a media feedback loop around the Star-Faced Man as Lee reveals a disastrous attempt to summon a UFO.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #10
Cole, Hawk, and Ruby investigate Bigfoot and the Department’s early taxonomy of cryptids, ghosts, aliens, and thought-forms.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #11
A Bigfoot case becomes a meditation on Wild Fiction, family memory, Western exploration, and the violence required to keep an impossible creature from becoming public history.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #12
Cole is taken back to Milwaukee as Hawk and Martin Barker trace the machinery of Black Hat from childhood fear to the violence of Ruby Ridge, Waco, and Oklahoma City.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #13
Cole returns to the school of his childhood as Hawk explains the Satanic Panic, Barker reveals his part in making a monster, and the Department confronts a living tulpa.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #14
Lee investigates the Babalon Working and a hidden rocket program as a young Hawk Harrison is drawn into the Department’s search for flying saucers.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #15
Dalton Hynes recounts the Department’s Point Pleasant operation, the creation of Mothman, the Silver Bridge disaster, and his encounter with Indrid Cold.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #16
A psychedelic 1968 encounter follows Lee Harvey Oswald through the question of whether a person, a nation, or an idea can be real when belief is the force giving it shape.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #17
Lee Harvey Oswald is drawn into a White House plan to make the Apollo 11 broadcast a reality-changing national myth, while Richard Nixon learns what the Department can do.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #18
Lee meets Grigori Petrov in Moscow as the Soviet Union collapses, while a parallel investigation into the Star-Faced Man tests whether Cole can remain inside the Department.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #19
Cole and Lee confront evidence of another twentieth century, a hidden archive at Fort Knox, and a Black Hat recording that turns the Department’s “white hats” into a contested claim.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #20
Black Hat gives Ruby a devastating account of Lee Harvey Oswald’s rise from Marine recruit to hidden ruler of American reality, and asks her to turn Cole against the Department.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #21
Cole and Ruby enter the Fort Knox archive as history shifts around them, while Lee’s former Soviet allies assemble a record of realities shaped by belief.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #22
As Black Hat feeds altered Department records into online conspiracy networks, Cole and Ruby confront the possibility that exposing the truth could destroy reality itself.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #23
The story returns to Dallas and to Lee’s recruitment, then follows Frank Capra’s account of the Department’s founding, Hitler’s recovered files, and the first records of the crossed-out-eye woman.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #24
In Minsk in 1960, Lee confronts Grigori Dziga Vertov about two competing worlds, the Department’s McCarthy-era crisis, and the story America tells about Kennedy.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #25
An unreliable confession links Dallas, a manufactured Mothman, and the cost of turning national trauma into a story.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #26
Huck is sent to Los Angeles to protect Marilyn Monroe, where studio myth, public rumor, and a dangerous woman in red begin to overlap.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #27
Huck remembers his recruitment in Louisiana and confronts the idea that Hollywood can manufacture people, angels, and perfect versions of desire.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #28
Hawk and Lee argue over war, ghosts, and disclosure while Ruby confronts the cost of making the Department tell the truth.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #29
Cole challenges Hawk over Lee’s disclosure as a history of manufactured Satanic panic reveals how the Department once used fear to seize control.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #30
Lee prepares to address the president as Cole and Ruby debate whether disclosure can save him or destroy the Department forever.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #31
A frightened teenager reaches out online as the Department studies how internet horror, drug folklore, and the Hat Man turn private fear into shared reality.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #32
Bobbie and Dexter argue over the Hat Man as a private sighting becomes a shared “big idea” that may be following her home.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #33
The Hat Man case escalates as a teenager’s online lore turns violent, forcing the Department to choose between containment and intervention.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #34
Ruby returns to a Department facility where a crooked-house manifestation, the Star-Faced Man, and a threatened defection expose the institution’s new and increasingly unstable regime.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #35
Cole is welcomed into White Hat as Lee and Martin Barker debate the end of the Department, while “Suspicious Minds” turns Elvis Presley’s image into a battleground for American identity.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #36
Huck Gaines faces the creature born from a story about God and Noah while Lee visits him in the hospital; in “Reality and the Beast,” Hunky’s wall of televisions becomes a containment room for the nation’s fears.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #37
Hunky and Hawk Harrison investigate living dinosaurs at a Florida Christian theme park while a Department case file traces the modern legend of the Mokele-Mbembe.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth #38
The Florida dinosaur operation becomes a broadcast weapon as Charity confronts her father; in Delaware, Hunky’s family history ends with Huck’s death and a new Department case file on Hollow Earth beliefs.
PublishedOpen record →Story arcs and storylines
Long-form narrative structures connecting issues, revelations, and changes in character knowledge.
Another National Anthem
The chapter-zero storyline in issue #0 that follows Hunter Hill’s interrogation, Charity Sinclair’s guidance, and a Department deciding how to recruit the internet generation.
PublishedOpen record →Reality and the Beast
Deviation 9, the issues #36–#38 storyline in which Hunky’s television room, the Gaines family, a creationist attraction, and living dinosaurs converge in a broadcast battle.
PublishedOpen record →Silent Movies
The twenty-one-chapter sequence running from issues #10–#30, tracing Lee Harvey Oswald, Department history, rival reality systems, Black Hat’s information war, and the approach to public disclosure.
PublishedOpen record →Suspicious Minds
The three-part backup storyline in issues #0, #34, and #35, spanning 1955 and 1977 as the Department contests Elvis Presley’s public image as an American asset.
PublishedOpen record →The City Upon a Hill
The City Upon a Hill expands the series from local investigations into American myth, religious belief, and the Department’s historical relationship with national power.
PublishedOpen record →The End of the World
The opening Department of Truth story arc follows Cole Turner from a Flat Earth investigation into the institution that manages belief as a material force.
PublishedOpen record →The Ministry of Lies
The Ministry of Lies arc traces the Department’s Cold War inheritance through Oswald, Soviet archives, competing histories, and the cost of treating truth as state power.
PublishedOpen record →Twilight's Last Gleaming
Twilight's Last Gleaming follows the Department through internet conspiracies, manipulated evidence, Hatman mythology, and the possibility that containment has become another form of authorship.
PublishedOpen record →What Your Country Can Do for You
The What Your Country Can Do for You arc follows the Department through celebrity mythology, manipulated history, and the return of old evidence in a changed America.
PublishedOpen record →Collections and publication guides
Collected editions, reading order, printing records, checklists, and publication history.
Collected-Edition Mapping
The publisher-verified mapping of trade paperbacks, Complete Conspiracy deluxe hardcovers, and the Wild Fictions hardcover, with ISBNs, dates, and special-material boundaries.
PublishedOpen record →Complete Issue Checklist
A publication checklist for The Department of Truth issues released through #38, with official release information and a clear distinction between released and scheduled material.
PublishedOpen record →Printing History and Product Codes
Publisher-confirmed printings and distributor identifiers, separating a documented reorder edition from assumptions about present scarcity, value, or total print run.
PublishedOpen record →Reading Order
Publication order, collected-edition sequence, and placement notes for The Department of Truth comic.
Updated August 2026Open record →The Department of Truth #1 Variant Covers
The verified cover checklist for The Department of Truth #1, including standard, incentive, retailer, and mystery designations listed by Image Comics.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth Collected Editions
Trade paperbacks, deluxe hardcovers, and the Wild Fictions collection that gather the series into reading units.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth Comics
Publication history, issue chronology, creators, collected editions, and the changing shape of The Department of Truth from #0 through the scheduled #39.
PublishedOpen record →The Department of Truth publication history
The release history of James Tynion IV and Martin Simmonds’ ongoing Image Comics series, its specials, collections, and expanding archive.
OngoingOpen record →Variant Cover Checklist: Issues #2–#22
Publisher-verified original-release codes and cover-letter artist credits for The Department of Truth #2–#22.
PublishedOpen record →Variant Cover Checklist: Issues #23–#38 and #0
Publisher-verified Lunar codes and cover-letter artist credits for the post-hiatus issues, issue #0, and the released sequence through #38.
PublishedOpen record →