Maybe he doesn’t always waste words with pointlessly ornate dialogue. I’m only being slightly sarcastic, because perhaps this comic is an anomaly, and I genuinely want to know why Stracynski is so popular. If anybody could point me to any of his work with a believable emotional core, please do let me know in the comments. I understand that JMS is a popular writer, so perhaps I just haven’t familiarized myself with his best work, but it’s comics like this (and a handful other issues that he’s written for other series’) that dissuade me from reading more of him. Michael Stracynski seems too impressed with himself to give what I’m sure he sees as a timely morality tale or a bold political statement any dramatic weight beyond a modestly compelling cliffhanger ending. Ham-fisted as it may be, this premise could have worked has it been handled with more care, but J. I can’t imagine many readers holding their breath for the next issue after reading this one though. This being the Twilight Zone, things don’t go quite as planned, but readers will have to wait for the next issue to see what happens. Knowing that his life will soon be crashing down upon him, he arranges for a mysterious company to erase him from existence and start him fresh with a new life, including a new face and body. Trevor Richmond is a wealthy young entrepreneur who cheats on his girlfriend and engages in shady business dealings. The plot of this first issue works from a familiar concept with a suspiciously Wolf of Wall Street-esque twist. It was with that attitude that I tried to approach The Twilight Zone #1. That said, part of the brilliance of The Twilight Zone is its deceptively simple premise: essentially, “what if something strange and unexplainable happened to an ordinary person?” Writers worked from that basic starting point since long before Rod Serling came around, but Serling gave a name to it. Without Rod Serling (or, to a lesser degree, black and white cinematography), I’m just not that interested.
Perhaps it is for this reason that I’ve never gotten into anything else bearing the “Twilight Zone” name. His eye for efficient-yet-substantial storytelling, tight dialogue, and nuanced characterization make him one of the few television writers that I would call a direct influence on my own writing career. He’s such a charismatic narrator that it’s easily forgotten that he was not only the creator of the series, but the writer behind most episodes. With its eerie atmosphere, innovative audio-visual techniques, and inspired casting (Robert Redford! Buster Keaton! Ron Howard!), the series has aged remarkably well for a number of reasons, but chief among them is Rod Serling. I’m a huge fan of the original 1959 incarnation of The Twilight Zone.
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