The Twilight Man: Rod Serling and the Birth of Television by Koren Shadmi

Life Drawn, 2019

ISBN-13: 9781643375717

Available:  Paperback, Kindle edition, comiXology

Koren Shadmi’s The Twilight Man: Rod Serling and the Birth of Television is a graphic biography following Rod Serling’s time in the military as a paratrooper, his diagnosis of “shell shock” and the subsequent nightmares, his rise to fame during the Golden Age of Television, and his life and struggles after the end of The Twilight Zone. The book reads like an episode of  the iconic series. Each chapter is contained within conversations between Serling and an attractive airplane passenger while on a seemingly endless PanAm flight. For those readers familiar with the show, at any moment you expect to see the Gremlin on the wing…

Something that struck me while reading The Twilight Man was that control was a constant in Serling’s work. The entertainment industry deemed him the “Angry Young Man” of Hollywood as he challenged networks and viewers through his stories to show the consequences of war, to reject censorship and racism, and what it means to be human in a messed up world. Only when he wrote his stories in terms of aliens, monsters, and speculative fiction did his work become less threatening to censors and producers.

I would recommend this book to fans of Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone or anyone interested in graphic biographies. Shadmi weaves a great story about a complicated man. The artwork is crisp, and Shadmi captures everyone’s likenesses well. The color pallet changes between these snippets of conversation from blue to black and white when the focus is turned to Serling’s past.

Koren Shadmi, an award-winning illustrator and cartoonist, studied illustration at The School of Visual Arts in New York where he teaches currently. His graphic novels have been published in the US, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Poland, Korea, and Israel. If you like The Twilight Man, look for Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and The Creation of D&D created with writer David Kushner. Highly recommended.

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker