Review – The Twilight Zone #5 (Dynamite Comics)

Publisher: Dynamite Entertainment
Writer: J. Michael Straczynski
Artist: Guiu Vilanova
Release Date: May 14, 2014

For three years, Diana Tyler has been working at a small cafe in the shadow of Wall Street, putting in long hours to pay for her college education. She’s level headed, strong, not given to flights of fancy…until the day when she suddenly finds herself able to listen in on the thoughts of other people. Suddenly a new world is revealed to her, with mysteries and wonders and an unforeseen threat that could mean the death of millions.

Shared universes and franchises are all the rage right now, and that’s kind of what we get with this “connected” story. Originally I thought staying in Trevor’s “world” wasn’t a good idea, but was I wrong. Diana is the waitress introduced in issue one. Her story takes place during the events of Trevor’s story and plays like a Quentin Tarantino film, which intersects with the other narrative threads, without getting tangled in them. The story’s biggest hurdle is the rules it seeks to establish. Diana is already having dreams of Manhattan blowing up at the start of the issue, but it’s not until Mr. Wylde gives Diana a gold coin that she can hear other people’s thoughts and see visions from the past and future.

Diana’s smart and skeptical attitude makes her feel like a real person; she’s convinced the gold coin is a fake, so she looks into getting appraised. Add psychic abilities on top of that and her interactions with other characters makes for some really entertainment moments.

The Twilight Zone in comic book format has a built in fail safe. The first issue in each arc establishes the character(s) and scenarios so that by the end of the story you get to choose your own adventure. You can either continue reading the story in the next couple issues or have a self-contained story with a cliffhanger ending.

I still think it was unnecessary to go out of the way to introduce the additional storylines in issue two, but the breadcrumbs connecting the stories and the characters referencing key events are both organic and strong enough to bridge the events together. There’s something unsettling when you have unusual events connected by everyday circumstances and people. As if to say there are no such things as coincidences in The Twilight Zone.

Rating: 3/5

The writer of this piece is:
Lawr_av
Laurence Almalvez
Laurence has previously written over at Whatculture.com.
Laurence tweets from @IL1511