The Department of Truth Volume 6: Twilight's Last Gleaming

The Department of Truth #6

by James Tynion IV, Martin Simmonds (illustrator), Letizia Cadonici (illustrator)

For the first time since the Department of Truth was founded, its highest official just revealed the whole, sordid history to a journalist—a journalist who happens to be agent Cole Turner’s husband. Can their relationship survive the cold, hard facts? And will it all be for nothing once Black Hat mounts their counter-offensive to the DoT’s riskiest gamble yet?
ALSO IN THIS High school outcast Frank is addicted to finding the darkest corners of the internet. But now those dark corners are reaching through the screen with very long fingers and very sharp teeth… BEWARE THE HAT MAN.
Multiple Eisner Award-winning writer JAMES TYNION IV (W0RLDTR33, The Nice House on the Lake) and Eisner Award-nominated artist MARTIN SIMMONDS (UNIVERSAL DRACULA) test the limit of the written word, while fan-favorite artist LETIZIA CADONICI (House of Slaughter) joins for DoT’s pitch-black spin on CreepyPasta.
Collects issues #28-33

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Horror, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Science Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics

176 pages, Paperback

Published November 11, 2025

About the author

Prior to his first professional work, Tynion was a student of Scott Snyder's at Sarah Lawrence College. A few years later, he worked as for Vertigo as Fables editor Shelly Bond's intern. In late 2011, with DC deciding to give Batman (written by Snyder) a back up feature, Tynion was brought in by request of Snyder to script the back ups he had plotted. Tynion would later do the same with the Batman Annual #1, which was also co-plotted by Snyder. Beginning in September 2012, with DC's 0 issue month for the New 52, Tynion will be writing Talon, with art by Guillem March. In early 2013 it was announced that he'd take over writing duties for Red Hood and the Outlaws in April.

Tynion is also currently one of the writers in a rotating team in the weekly Batman Eternal series.

Reviews

[Sean Gibson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Still creepy, still compelling. Though every time I read the word "Hatman," I got the "Scatman" song in my head, and that made the whole thing a lot less scary.

"HE'S THE HATMAN...BE BOP BOP BADA BOP! BOP BOP BADA BOP!"

[Oscar · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm so confused

[Thomas Gagel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like that what Tynion’s saying here is that like yeah the American empire has completely lost control of its narrative and therefore its own reality, but like there’s a whole group of liberal young change-makers that would happily rebuild it. All that it would take would be for the old propagandists, the storytellers who’ve built the reality of America thus far, to just give up power to them. An easy fix. But that they won’t. They’d rather rule to no end.



However, Tynion I love you but pls just continue the main story eight flashback arcs is getting a little much (even though I like them)

Also fellow DoT fans if you see this, I think you guys might get a lot out of Society of the Spectacle! Just trust me

[Frédéric · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5*

A TPB with two different subplots:

- Internal divisions threaten to implode the D.O.T., already under attack from the Black Hats. The stakes are high, but the narrative is somewhat subdued and borderline confusing, particularly with Ruby and the homeless man. A little disappointing.

- Simmonds hands over to Letizia Cadonici to illustrate a nicely crafted creepypasta. The Italian artist is very different from Simmonds - very close to Werther Dell'Edera in fact - but this artistic break to illustrate this "deviation" is pleasant, not to say welcome, to lighten Simmonds' sometimes stifling style.

[TV’s Kevin Lanigan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a good, creepy, unique book. There's a horror story in this told through greentext forums. Nobody's doing it like this.

[Jake Kilroy · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's just remarkable how breathlessly and seamlessly Tynion can tell a ghost story of reality, tying together a score of what-ifs looming and lurking in America's history books, set against some of the most radical, chaotic, and hauntingly squirrelly comic book art courtesy of Simmonds. It makes Cadonici's clear, straightforward style for a memory tale seem downright surreal. I love how many conversations are happening concurrently and overlapping here. I love how much the United States is treated like a sinister fantasy with deep lore it has to eventually contend with. I love that the winks to real events make even them seem weirder and part of a conspiracy to obliterate our better selves. I love how much Tynion and Simmonds want everyone to understand that it was always bad and weird, and the disconnect from our shared experience on Earth is only getting ravaged the more we engage and explore it. What could you believe into existence? Could you will a better tomorrow? What would that take? Couldn't you so much more easily believe that the decline will continue? What is the power of gritting your teeth and beholding the collapse of this country, humanity, and reality? Good god, what then? Can you even imagine what waits for us?

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has been a wild series and it ends with one massive cliffhanger that chilled me to the bone. It's probably my favourite volume so far thanks in part to that ending.

[razzmataz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally the coverage on the hat man I’ve been yearning for.

[Tom Nicholson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Banger, after, banger.

[M.i. · Rating 4 out of 5]

It tapers off a bit at the end when it feels like the book had crossed over into ‘something is killing the children’ territory. But I enjoyed it, including how poignant this books feel to the current zeitgeist.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trying to make it better too late. The Hatman. Balance. Coarse language for vulgar feelings.

You're not real.
Neither are you.

[Alexis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I followed this really well, which is great, because it's been a minute since the last volume, and this series isn't always the easiest for me. Solid point in its favor. It also genuinely disturbed me, which I'm reasonably pleased about. The Hat Man story is really well done - the art is scary, the character is scary, the ending is thrilling - all around win. In general, the art is very good, and the story is still interesting. I'll read more if I can.

[Alex Sarll]

With all the talk of going public, I thought this volume might see the Department of Truth going up against the Department of Government Efficiency, but while comics have pretty short lead times compared to films or even books, they still weren't quite enough to catch the brief, inglorious flare of DOGE. All the same, we get to see Watergate through the series' cracked lens*, and at times the "But that was an illusion" reveals made me imagine the craziest counterfactual of all: what if Adam Curtis were actually as good as the easily impressed believe? The Department regulars are divided by different visions of the way forward, and it all culminates in Lee Harvey Oswald's most destructive interaction with a president.

But all that is just the first half of the volume. For the rest, regular artist Martin Simmonds hands over to Letizia Cadonici for a woozy tale of teens under attack from online creepypasta come to life. Which risks muddying the distinction between this Tynion book and w0rldtr33, but does reflect back on what came before; after all, aren't we now living in a world where edgelords from overlapping corners of the internet have made their mad, horrible fantasies come true?

*And only this week I saw a book announced about how unfairly poor Nixon was treated there, as the rewriting of history continues outside the pages of horror comics. Not that I can see why the right would bother when, by their revised standards, Tricky Dicky was practically a communist.

[Jonathan Crabb · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't really review this volume without spoilers so reader beware if you haven't read this series yet.

I just love this series so much as it's core concept that there is a department in the government that can make things real if only enough people believe in it. It's brilliant. This volume continues to push the story forward with the "black hat" group opposing the Department of Truth. I can't believe that it hasn't done it yet, but this volume includes Trump (hoo boy where is that going?) and 4chan internet theories (such rich soil for the story arc). This volume brings in several other elements which reflect the last several years of DEI related progress (regress?) which makes it feel pertinent as well.

I continue to massively enjoy this series. I hope it goes on for a long while. Can you imagine how where it could go with AI and LLMS??

[Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

*4.25

I was very excited to read this since this is my favorite graphic novel series, and it didn't disappoint. The artwork is phenomenal as usual, the writing is top-notch.

However, as a volume, this just feels very transitional. It shows some humanity to our cast of characters and builds things for future payoff but this volume singularly is not exactly satisfying as much as it could have been

[Eric Edwards · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
This one felt a little more back to form but I’m done with this series. There is still come cool art stuff (like the tin foil hat!) but this one just didn’t really go anywhere. I don’t think anything has really changed I’m just not into the vibe anymore and there isn’t enough story here to keep me engaged.

[Shawn C. Baker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am definitely in need of a full reread on DOT, but coming hot off closing out my first go-through on this volume, I’m tempted to say this is the best - or at least my favorite - since the first couple. Also, this skirts SIKTC territory big time. I mean, the whole DOT series does, but this leads me back to thinking the two may be connected.

[Jason Seligson · Rating 5 out of 5]

We're finally back to the main plot (with a few deviations, of course) and Tynion is crushing it.

[Ian Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Make America Great Again but not like that

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Department of Truth: Twilight’s Last Gleaming (2025), #6 in the series, is leading us step by step down an ever darker tunnel, step by step. Funny that I don’t much like Tynion’s other horror work, but this grounded political historical horror work is more frighteningly scary than any of his other books to me. It is People’s History of the United States written by Hunter Thompson and maybe Alan Moore, linking all of the worst of American history paranoically (and convincingly) to the present, to where we march, issue by issue.

This volume is dark, like the film version of 1984 dark, thanks to Martin Simmonds drawing us into the madness of the DoT over-narrative. Then Letizia Cadonici takes us on a seemingly side tale inot teens and the internet, 4chan, and so on, where millions believe what they read. Since it is a teen focus, I get a sense this part is connected to Tynion’s own Something is Killing the Children, of which I only read one volume. But it’s central to the main story, really. It’s all connected.

The main story here remains the battle between the Department of Truth (featuring Lee Harvey Oswald) and The Black Hat, Truth versus Disinformation throughout American history, Lies My History Teacher Told Me, the erasure of histories of people of color, and so on. With some scary guy named Hatman edging in, like King’s It or Bradbury’s Mr. Dark. The actual history passing through the nightmare includes Nixon, Watergate, expanding Vietnam to Cambodia and Laos, all those good things we were lied about, setting the stage for today’s hallucinatory dark fantasies. Comics as political commentray, and strangely entertaiining as well as depressingly enlightening.

[Clint · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars
This is pretty great, as long as you don’t mind that half of its six issues are devoted to an expositional diversion that halts the present-day narrative. That seems to be the standard for all Tynion’s ongoing series at this point, though, and the tangent is a rewarding one.

The first half checks another big historical item off the list in Watergate, but also seems to acknowledge that Trump’s present-day malignancy is going to be a lasting influence on American politics (instead of a brief nasty fever) via the most direct inclusion yet of his current administration into the story. That’s a development that has me both intrigued and wary for the plot going forward.

The digressive back half is more immediately interesting to me, reminiscent of a Jane Schoenbrun story (e.g. I Saw The TV Glow) if it took place in Tynion’s Slaughterverse. It technically offers more back story on a lesser-seen member of the Dept, but more than that it’s a satisfying and largely self-contained creepypasta mini-arc with trans coming-of-age themes.

“Just look at the world. The ideas that used to be caged up are running wild in the streets. Everything feels open to argument. Science isn’t science anymore. The truth isn’t the truth anymore. It’s all unfixed.”

“I think..there’s something bad in the computers, Frank.”
“All that’s in the computers is us Bobbie. It’s just us looking at ourselves, and that’s why it’s so scary, but it’s not real.”

“People are just waiting to believe what they want to believe.”

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of a disappointment, to be honest. The battle between the DoT and Black Hat is starting to heat up and, right when that gets interesting, we're suddenly dumped into a story about the dark corners of the Internet, creepypasta, and Hatman, with art right out of SIKTC. It does look like that other story is going to connect into the main storyline, but it was frustrating to be wrenched out of a much more intriguing story for something that, so far, is considerably less so.

[Nacho Pena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sexto volumen de la serie, que parece que se acerca a su ecuador. Y digo parece, porque justo cuando la cosa se pone candente tenemos una nueva desviación (es decir, otro arco argumental flashback) sobre Frank, la informática del Departamento, que bien podría ser una historia ambientada en otro gran éxito de Tynion IV, 'Hay algo matando niños', con un creepypast de Internet que no es tan potente. Igualmente sigue siendo muy disfrutable.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Still incredibly complex, Tynion continues to deliver a narrative of truth and fictions that is wildly relevant to today--with this volume delivering two stories and two distinct art styles that have a lot to say about the current moment.

[Clement Coleman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This series has me by the throat. It continues to surprise and delight while cleaving to its original promise to both explain and obscure the American experiment—its successes and utter failures—while giving us a fantastical yet compelling idea for how dreams, faith and reality all intersect.