Written by: Denton J. Tipton
Art by: Menton3
Published by: IDW
When President Trump announced that we would be seeing the release of classified government documents pertaining to John F Kennedy’s assassination, I did not expect to receive it in the form of an X-Files comic book. That is truly more telling of me than the president, but let’s digress.
The X-Files JFK Disclosure is a series focusing on the aura of conspiracy that has surrounded JFK’s death since the assassination on November 22nd, 1963. The story begins with Mulder being contacted by someone that supposedly wants to come clean with some information he’s been holding secret for years, but without spoiling too much, it is safe to say that issue #1 of this series does not want to dig too deep into the mystery just yet. It’s setting up for a long-form story and may not satisfy readers on its own, so before you pick it up, I recommend you ask yourself if you plan on investing on the entire run.
The writing is solid, remaining true to familiar characters. The pacing of the dialogue is fair, and any fan of X-Files will feel at home reading this book. If anyone is new to the series, they will most likely be lost immediately–but realistically who doesn’t know agents Muller and Scouldy by now?
On the down side, I find the art difficult to enjoy. The style shifts a few times in the book, sometimes intentionally appearing blurry and obscured to presumably look mysterious, but ultimately appearing only muddy and incomplete. Some panels are done in the style of police or courtroom sketches which add to the sense of digging through secret government documents, but even those panels feel inappropriately stylistic when compared to the smudgy gray paintings on the following pages.
I’m hopeful this story goes some place entertaining in issue #2, but I’m not quite won over just yet. I’m further confused by the timing; while it makes sense to play off of the buzz-worthy news of the official JFK documents being released, it is also maybe the least fun time to write fiction about the conspiracy surrounding it. When the government is openly protective of secret facts of a historical event it can be a lot of fun to read a story about how it was aliens all along.
I wonder if perhaps this series should have aimed to wrap up right around October 25th instead of release then, but we’ll let the story tell itself and perhaps win a place on our shelf.
