Written by: Denton J. Tipton
Art by: Menton3
Published by: IDW
I was a little down on issue #1, but X-Files: JFK Disclosure #2 turned out to be as disappointing as I had feared. My editor has told me to not summarize the complete plot of a comic in my reviews, so I’m going to try my best. Mulder is told by a self-confessed inside man that Kennedy was assassinated because he was about to reveal the truth that aliens crash landed in Roswell. Oops, my one sentence summed up the entire book.
This comic uses a great deal of fluffy dialogue to pad out a very thin and predictable concept, basically having secretive men in blurry situations discuss how they “can’t believe the vice president signed off on this” and “well the blah blah Castro is blah blah” or the very shocking “blah blah blah Nixon blah blah!” There aren’t any clever uses of historical figures or lines being dotted between actual events; they just name drop people in one of those unnatural dialogue faux paws of behaving as if one is on stage at all times.
There is a tone that each discovery is supposed to be shocking or exciting because it’s the truth and the truth is out there, but when the bottom line feels like it’s the first thing the writer thought of, most of the excitement goes out the window. I close my eyes and can see someone in a boardroom saying, “Oh, they’re going to release the JFK files, there’s a conspiracy angle there, let’s do an X-Files story” and another man, cloaked in shadow and puffs of smoke from his cigarette replied, “Well, X-Files is that one about aliens, right? Let’s say that aliens is what done it.”
Similar to the first issue, the art is a double-edged sword. The style of pursuing confidential documents and police sketches to help sell the secretive theme is clever, but greatly overused. If these occurred only flashbacks it might feel like readers are piecing together the conspiracy themselves, but when used cover to cover I’m just left feeling like it’s a big mess.