Book Review: THE TWILIGHT ZONE: STORIES FROM THE FIFTH DIMENSION

Title: The Twilight Zone: Stories from the Fifth Dimension

Author: Several authors, letterers and illustrators

Publisher: IDW Dark

Pages: 128

My GoodReads Rating: 

The Twilight Zone: Stories from the Fifth Dimension is inspired by the Original CBS Television Series. I got excited when I saw this title on Edelweiss. In my excitement at finding stories based on The Twilight Zone, of which I am a huge fan, I missed the fact that this was not Fiction, but in the genre of Comics and Graphic Novels.

 

There are no good guys or bad guys in these stories. There is just the Twilight Zone and how there is no coming back from it, whether for good or evil. Entering the Twilight Zone spells the end of the world as the characters know it. It is either a new beginning or the end for them. Interestingly, each story was exactly 22 pages long.

 

Blanks by Dan Watters (writer); Morgan Beem (artist); Sandy Tanaka (letterer), Nicolas Niño and Ellen Boener (co-editors); Rating:  ⭐⭐⭐  

A billionaire, Edward Kane, has contributed enormous sums of money to fund research into finding a cure for the ills of the human condition. In other words, to eliminate disease and ensure longevity and immortality. This research is being undertaken on an unknown island. Suffering from stomach cancer, with less than a year to live, Kane insists on being subject Zero for the ‘benevolent virus’ which is expected to infiltrate the body and wipe out the immune memory, removing all traces of decay and degeneration. 

He wakes up from the experiment, feeling 20 years younger, only to learn from the doctor that everyone at the research facility has been rendered faceless, without thought or feeling, as the virus mutated, stripping them of the very things that make us human.

As Kane seeks to escape on the helicopter on which he arrived on the island, the doctor destroys the helicopter, saying that the only way to contain the horrible phenomenon is to ensure that no one ever gets to leave the island. Kane, forever young, healthy and ageless, is now doomed to spend eternity with the “Blanks”.

Like the TV series, the story here succeeded in hitting long after we turn the last page, as we imagine the fate of Kane, who will likely spend eternity longing for death. The story also sounds a note of caution, reminding humankind not to mess with the essential nature of life and humanity. Mankind can play God only at its own peril.

 

World of Your Wildest Dreams by Tom Scioli (writer, artist and letterer); Rating:  ⭐⭐⭐

The story is set many centuries in the future. First Officer Arlo Chapel is leading a team into outer space. When the vessel finds a planet with an atmosphere like that of earth, they decide to make a landing. They find life on the planet, in the form of vegetation and insects. Soon they realise that the world is responding to them based on their thoughts. Presently, people show up and take them away, accuse them of killing and jail them. The crew realise that shouting out bad things causes the prison walls to weaken and disintegrate, enabling them to escape.

The captors catch up with them and reveal that theirs is an asylum world. People come to them from other worlds to seek help. The terrain on the world is such that it mirrors the individual’s inner world, forcing them to confront it and deal with the fallout. 

The beings on this planet can change their external form in order to engage with visitors based on their psychological trauma. The beings scold the earthlings for not having learned to deal with their trauma, even as a species. However, the good news is that help is at hand. This planet is a resort, where visitors stay as long as possible to get their issues resolved, days, weeks, months, years, even centuries.

While the others choose to stay back and heal, Arlo decides to head home. Once he returns to his base on Planet Earth, he is committed to an institution. Everyone thinks that he abandoned his crew, and has now constructed an elaborate fantasy to explain his guilt away.

Centuries later, human greed remains unchanged. Space vessels are being sent out to look for minerals and to open chains of coffee shops and malls, in pursuit of power and wealth. When Arlo and his team espy an animal, one of them asks, “What should we name the new species?” – a classic colonial move, establishing supremacy on lands that have rich cultures and don’t need your dominance.

There was altogether too much text here. Graphic novels and comics work only with minimal text. Here, characters keep speaking, as if they are in a novel. A lot of the conversations involve characters telling each other things they should rightly know. As a concept, I found this story interesting, but the execution fell short.

In between, there was a page from the first story that seemed to have crept in inadvertently. 

 

The Relic by James Stokoe (writer, artist and letterer); Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This story is about a cruel king who, on the strength of his army, has been plundering other lands, dominating their tribes, seizing their wealth and trampling upon their gods. Most tribes either flee when he attacks or pay obeisance. One tribe, professing to worship the Voice of the True God, refuses to flee or bow low. The plunderers break into the stronghold of the tribe. There they destroy the people completely, leaving just one prisoner, and find a power that overpowers their own. The king tells the prisoner to show him how to wield the power of this god. The prisoner leads him to their sacred temple (a museum) the first chamber of which contains the skeletal remains of creatures long gone (dinosaurs), the second chamber contains guns, tanks, fighter planes, and other weapons of destruction, and the third and final chamber contains a kitschy brand, which is being worshipped.

The story asks us to mull over a very important question. Many years, centuries or even millennia hence, when war has destroyed every vestige of progress and development that mankind has spend millennia garnering, what will the people living then worship? Our art, our learning, or something debased. The Voice of the True God, it is revealed, is a cheesy jingle created to sell a sugary sweet and unhealthy drink.

The final page tells us: In the centuries after the bombs fall, when human progress hasn’t just been taken down a rung but thrown violently off of the whole ladder, what treasures of our age might survive for those ignorant souls that follow?

Will they be drawn to a piece of exquisite art that fully encapsulates the cultural footprint of our time? Maybe some fragment of wisdom from one of our greatest thinkers that lights them a path out of squalor and darkness?

Or perhaps something more common…A throwaway gag of consumerism, dreamed up in a boardroom to catch as many thirsty eyes as possible, misremembered, deified and mistakenly placed on the highest plinth amid the ruins of mankind’s greater histories.

A kitschy advertisement for the world that was, here in the Twilight Zone. 

 

False Bottom by Nate Powell (writer, artist and letterer); Rating:⭐⭐⭐⭐

Twins Chet and Laura and Laura’s husband, Gabe, hire a houseboat to celebrate Chet’s first step towards independence, moving out of his mother's basement and getting his first apartment. Laura is happy for Chet but he persists in behaving in a curmudgeonly manner and resents the help she extends to him. They discover that the main deck of the houseboat has nothing in the way of furniture, except for a single futon and a rectangular opening filled with water in the middle of the room.

Laura is not happy that Chet didn’t go for a job interview that she has secured for him. He thinks that she is too condescending and controlling while she thinks that he’s not a functioning adult yet. They are still bickering. when Gabe hears some music coming from the cutaway, the rectangular opening.

Chet jumps into the water, and Laura and Gabe jump after him, but they cannot find him in the water. He has vanished into another world. Chet steps out of the water, and finds himself in a dark place, welcomed by some hairy beings. Their faces are in darkness, and he has a bad feeling about it. When Laura and Gabe come out of the water, they can’t find Chet at all. What’s more, it’s as if he was never on the boat. The boat itself is beautifully appointed now, furnished well with everything one might want on a holiday. Gabe tells Laura to forget about Chet. He is content to move on without deadweight Chet but Laura won’t give up on her brother. Except that now they are in the Twilight Zone and the situation is out of their control. Laura jumps into the water once again and comes up to the floor of the cutaway. There he is. Separated by glass, the siblings can never find their way to each other again.

 

Silent Warning by L Marlow Francavilla and Francesco Francavilla (writers); Francesco Francavilla (artist); Sandy Tanaka (letterer); Rating: ⭐⭐

In a world in which the biggest danger is the sound you cannot hear, Dr Emily Sorensen is a soundwave virtuoso. But other scientists look upon her work with scepticism and even derision. When a meteor crashes into the ocean, Dr Sorensen is called in. A research nearby has picked up sonic pulses and the government needs Dr Sorensen’s help to decipher their meaning. At the base, Dr Sorensen meets four men, Chief James Eddington who heads the mission, marine biologist Dr Andy Carson, seismic expert Lt Arthur Jeffreys and Lt Michael Oguri, the pilot.

The men have no regard for Dr Sorensen’s competence. There may also be some dismissal of her because she is a woman. The men decide to step into the water to investigate the activity below, despite Dr Sorensen’s warnings and reservations that there may be toxic gases around.

This story was more like a disaster flick, where the destruction is mindless, and not as a result of an act of hubris on the part of the characters. 

(I read this book on Edelweiss. Thank you to the author, the publisher and Edelweiss.)