Comic imagines world of super secret military unit

(CNN) -- Early this year, comic book writer Nathan Edmondson set out to tell fictional stories based on the super-secret U.S. government paramilitary organization once named the Intelligence Support Activity (or ISA). But it turns out what Edmonson created from his wildest imaginations hues pretty close to reality about the little known, seldom discussed agency. His stories focused on a specialized subset of the organization that was a "technologically advanced, mixed-gender team of first responders with backgrounds in a variety of military and spy disciplines." In reality, the ISA has been around since the 1970s. Originally hidden from the Pentagon and Congress, its existence has never publicly or officially been acknowledged. "The ISA is a secret kept from the Army, it's even a secret kept from itself," said Edmondson. "If you're in the ISA, you may not know who else is in it. It's the military equivalent of telling a story about aliens in space. You're reaching out for that great mystery, that void to see what you can pull out of it." The mystery around the group alone seemed like a natural for storytelling. Then a funny thing happened as Edmondson started publishing the Image Comics title: He got a lot of things right. "There were parts of this group that we crafted as fiction that we later found out were not as fictional as we thought," the writer told CNN. Once Edmondson discovered this, he made a point to have the right people consulting on every issue.