I'll admit that the controversy over this book has me somewhat mystified. From the moment the project was announced, the storyline made perfect sense to me. Better still, The Truth features the work of Kyle Baker, one of my favorites since his days on ultra-weird Shadow series from DC.

If you've been under a rock and wonder what exactly this is, The Truth is a mini-series relating the story of the super-soldier experiments before Steve Rogers, when the army used black soldiers for their trials.

As an added bonus from Marvel, the preview pages here are not from the book getting released next week, but from the second issue. Bill explains why below.

Take a look at this artwork and see (if I may plug DC even more) why Baker is a perfect choice to do Plastic Man. There's a cartoony realism to his work that fits both drama and comedy. The Truth, of course, is likely to lean heavily on the former.

As a side note, this is officially the last piece of hype from the desk of Bill Rosemann, who left Marvel this afternoon. We'll be hearing from him soon, no doubt, with hopefully himself to hype.

When one story gets magazines like Entertainment Weekly, USA Today and Spin -- as well as newspapers such as The New York Daily News, The Boston Globe and The Philadelphia Daily News -- talking, you know it's big. And when the story they're talking about is a comic book... well, that's just cool for the entire industry.

Now, TRUTH: RED, WHITE & BLACK -- the most buzzed-about mini-series since
ORIGIN -- is finally headed to a comics shop near you. Yes, you've read interviews with writer Robert Morales, artist Kyle Baker and editor Axel Alonso... but are you ready for what they will reveal? Make no mistake, the six-issue series may shock you, but as Comic Shop News said, "TRUTH's socio-politics may be controversial, but the story is nevertheless thought-provoking."

And just to show you that the creative process is humming along, here's four interior pages from the second issue, now available for order until November28th.

Derek McCaw