For decades, the mystery and conspiracy of the grassy knoll and the assassination of President Kennedy have been studied, leaving many theorists to question exactly who truly killed JFK. Fiction is the biggest culprit of these questions 55 years later – Was there a second shooter? A third? Was it a time traveler setting right what once was wrong? 

One story that never “found” the answer to this conspiracy though was the king of conspiracy series – The X-files. Of all shows to never get into this, why not the government themselves? There were clues to the events on November 22 – The Smoking Man supposedly having made the shot, the link between the original investigation and a mysterious online user Romeo 61, the bizarre man Langley ate lunch with who claimed to have been the shooter – yet not of these completely answered the question. The Smoking Man’s story was partly an unreliable narrator, considering how little his information could ever be trusted. He may still have had plenty to do with the assassination though, given his secret work in the government, and his father’s relationship with Castro.

All of this has resurfaced in a X-files new graphic novel, JFK Disclosure. When Mulder receives a mysterious call from a dying man, he learns that this person worked with his father, Bill Mulder, to assassinate the president. While sketchy at times, the story blends what we already know from Musings from a Smoking Man, and blends it with information new to the audience. Why was the president taken out? What was his relationship and knowledge of the Roswell incident? How many patsies were there really?

Overall, I was not a fan of this book. Even had I watched Musings shortly before reading this, noticing particular characters from the 1960s was a bit difficult until halfway through the book. The younger version of the Smoking Man is completely unrecognizable, and when you do realize it is him, most of the story is immediately remembered from other episodes of the show. Nevertheless, seeing it all in one form made the story flow slightly better, but, unfortunately, not well enough to appreciate without follow-up. As always, any information Mulder receives from this dying man is submitted then stolen, only to be forgotten, and it does not appear that Mulder cares enough about this new data to investigate it on his own. While an interesting read, this two-part story might be better left on the shelf.