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Submitted for your approval...
Yeah, I know Rod Serling only used the phrase in about three episodes, but it's become so synonymous with The Twilight Zone, and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, for that matter, that it feels weird not seeing the phrase in a book entitled The Twilight Zone. But that's an issue I'll have to deal with along with a few others concerning this book.
Announced at San Diego Comic-Con, writer J. Michael Straczynski, at the behest of Dynamite's CEO Nick Barrucci, has created a 12-issue run for The Twilight Zone consisting of three standalone, yet somewhat interconnected, arcs. The first arc concerns Wall Street Executive Trevor Richmond who commissions a shady man named Mr. Wylde, and his behind-the-scenes operations to erase his identity and make him a new man before his fraudulent activities are discovered and he's sent to prison. Offered a single pill to start the process, Trevor is slowly rebuilt from the cells out with his new persona, Thomas Riley, fully formed just as the shoe drops on his company. Content that he's managed to dodge the bullet and live out the rest of his life as a new man without a care in the world, Trevor, or Thomas, discovers that leaving an old life behind doesn't mean it can't be picked up by someone else.
The Twilight Zone is an interesting concept to put into the medium of comic books. The original television show ran from 1959-1964 with each half-hour episode, though the fourth season had a one-hour episode format, consisting of standalone stories that were only connected by the enigmatic narrator (Rod Serling) who essentially provided context by bookending the episode with brilliantly written prose about human nature, fear, vanity, the world at large, etc. It was a show steeped in Cold War mentality, highlighting major fears of the times or looking to the past through the lens of science fiction while forcing the audience to look long and hard at themselves in the process. One of the more
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