Rich Ellis

After what appears to be a meteor passes by the good people of suburban Maple Street and the electricity - phones and radios and all - goes out, neighbors begin to grow suspicious of neighbors and a mob mentality of fear and righteous anger begins to break out.

This slim graphic novel purports to recreate a screenplay by The Twilight Zone's Rod Serling; never having been a Twilight Zone fan (or for that matter, having seen any of the episodes!), I can't really comment on how true or not this book is to the series, particularly the episode in question. But as a reader, I found it entertaining enough. The book also provides some details in a foreword and an afterword about Serling and The Twilight Zone, which I found informative. There was mention of the fact that sometimes Serling cut scenes from his screenplays when it came to making the TV show, either due to time constraints or other limitations of the television medium. The creators of this graphic novel series based on the screenplays aim to include those deletions back in to the story.

The main idea of this particular story - of neighbors turning on neighbors with just a little nudging - is clearly a call to the dangers of McCarthyism, but sadly it could easily be applicable today with people's fear of immigrants, Muslims, homosexuals, [insert minority group here]. This is hammered home in the last words of the book as narrated by the Serling character: "The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices--found only in the pettiness of the human mind. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own..." There were times when it felt like this theme was hit perhaps a little too heavy or simply that it felt rushed how quickly people turned on one another/changed their minds as to who was really the "monster" (aka alien from outerspace), but overall the briefness of the comic format allowed the theme to be displayed and examined just a bit while giving readers something to continue to think about once the book is finished.

The illustrations are not mind-blowingly fantastic, but they adequately convey the story being told. While I'm not sure if this book is an *improvement* on the series per se or an investment that a die-hard fan would find worthwhile, I think it's an interesting enough way of getting these stories told in a different way to a new audience. That being said, I'm not convinced that I'll personally continue on with the limited series, so I'm not sure that I could wholeheartedly recommend these books to others.… (mer)