Explore Twilight Zone: Shadow Substance Written By Mark Rahner Available In Kindle

Zone: Shadow amp Substance is a compilation of eleven stories from The Twilight Zone, including the eponymous "Shadow amp Substance," as well as "Lost Tales," "" and theAnnual.
It was a pretty entertaining read and the stories vary wildly in quality, with some feeling like they aren't very Twilight Zone at all Laughing Matter, for example, but some of my favorites included Stumbling Distance, Takers, It's All in How You Frame It, and The Comics Code.
It's worth a read if you're a fan of The Twilight Zone,

Note: I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley, I was not compensated in any other fashion for the review and the opinions reflected below are entirely my own.
Special thanks to the publisher and author for providing the copy, 'Twilight Zone: Shadow amp Substance' by Mark Rahner, Tom Peyer and John Layman is a collection ofdifferent comics, including the Shadow amp Substance miniseries and some one shot issues.
I liked it, but felt that something was lacking,

A famous author returns to his home town for a book signing and steps back in time, and meets his younger self.
A man living among group of people live in a strange type of prison where the rooms have no houses have no roofs and food comes in from the sky in feeder tubes decides to fight back.
A filibustering senator opposed to aid for the poor finds himself among them, These and more are the stories that take the reader to The Twilight Zone,

I'm a fan of The Twilight Zone, I remember the television

show, and read some of the novelizations by Rod Serling, These stories felt like the mediocre stories from that series, not the better ones 'To Serve Man' anyone, The art quality varies thoughout, and while the covers are pretty nice, the interior art is just mediocre, I was excited to read this, and while I liked it, I just didn't love it,

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Dynamite Entertainment, Diamond Book Distributors, and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel, I received a free advance review copy of this book from the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.


I enjoyed these comic/graphic stories, True to the style of the original Twilight Zone stories yet updated with more modern subjects and treatments of older themes, I feel that the intent was achieved for the most part.
The art was spot on for the nostalgic intent as well,

As with any story collection I enjoyed some stories more than others, but that is always a subjective thing and the stories that fell a bit flat for me might be the ones that another reader enjoys the most.
In fact, for the last year of so I have been rereading classic Creepy and Eerie comics and those are the same waynot every story is a winner for me.


As a horror fan foremost, I was wishing for more sinister twists to these tales but to be fair, that is more the style of horror comics than Twilight Zone stories, which have more irony than bloody vengence.


Somewhere betweenand a half andfor me, That is from a reader who was more a fan of Rod Sterling's Night Gallery than of Twilight Zone so you may have a different view.
I have watched a few of the original Twilight Zone TV shows, listened to some of the radio adaptions, and read novelizations of a number of the original episodes.
Twilight Zone: Shadow amp Substance is a collection ofshort stories told in graphic form, Each story offers a look at people who end up in a strange situations, There is a lady who stopped sharing via online services and just disappeared, There is the author who ended back in his hometown and interacted with his earlier self, There is the politician who gets what he deserved! Each tale has the nice little frisson of terror that makes the Twilight Zone fun and interesting.
A nice addition to the Twilight Zone universe! It was ok, . . some decent stories and some predictable stories, . .
Maybe The Twilight Zone should just remain a TV show Being such a huge fan of the original series of “The Twilight Zone”, Im an instant sucker for anything based off of it.
Unfortunately, most of the time things inspired by the series fail to capture Rod Serlings magic and this set of stories in this graphic novel is a prime example.


The stories are barely interesting and all seem to make a generic attempt to mimic the TZ aesthetic.
I honestly cant remember one that was worthwhile, Most ended flatly and some made no sense at all, The art is serviceable but at times rather bland,

It took me over a month to finish it because I had no desire to, Finally did though and it was an absolute chore to do so,
It does Rod Serling justice, and has decent artwork, but it was PG, when it didn't need to be.
With stories set in the modern day, it should have went with the slightly smaller audience, and the R rating.
It was good, but it could have been so much better with a little more reality, The problem with any comic in a franchise goes double for those licensed from other media: everyones going to have slightly different ideas both of what the original property was, and of how best to get its essence on to the page.
Ive not seen anything like every Twilight Zone episode, so perhaps Im unaware of a load of filler and misfires and unfairly comparing the short stories here only to the classics.
And even then, this collection is not without some worthy contributions, but I think the problem may be in the format as much as anything.
The first story here is the longest and also the best, following an author who goes back to his home town in more senses than he intended.
From the opening monologue on, it really captures the shows feel, where as in Ray Bradbury, or Stephen King any street in any small town in America can take you on a detour into the uncanny.
Thats written by a chap called Mark Rahner, not a name with which Im familiar, and though it was the presence of Tom Peyer and John Layman in the credits which led me to grab this from Netgalley, it turns out they only contribute a short piece each, with the vast majority scripted by Rahner.
And possibly its just that each person only has so many good Twilight Zone stories to tell, at least solo and in a short space of time, but Rahner rapidly gets into diminishing returns, and I think a lot of that is simply because the subsequent stories are mostly far too short to capture the right sort of mounting unease, meaning they stand or fall on the setup alone and bare like that, too many of these setups feel lacking.
Two consecutive stories are variants on careful what you wish for time travel the one with a Randfan US lawmaker thrust back to the Depression, and still missing the point, could have been hilarious with a bit of room to breathe the one with a mediaeval reenactor in the middle ages states the bleeding obvious, and doesnt even have the depth of research to do so properly.
And so it goes on too many pat morals and cheesy twists especially the social media story ugh!, too little time to develop any extra layers, with only the one about the space colonists saved by the authentically Twilight Zone look of its retrostyled monochrome art.


Peyers story makes good use of the comics form to homage a classic episode Laymans is excellent, but then Im a sucker for anything driven by loathing of the anticomics liar, prig and general shit Frederic Wertham.
Not for me. I loved the TV shows, but I didn't think this worked as a comic, The illustration was not great, seems to be digitally enhanced from photographs I could be wrong but it's definitely not in the great tradition of comicbook illustration.
I could not really get into it,

A preview copy was provided by the publisher in return for a review, One half long form story and the rest a collection of shorts, the quality isn't consistently great, but nothing terrible drags it down.
To bad there isn't more, Reading this comic, I couldn't escape the feeling that this less like the Twilight Zone and more like the jokes people make about the Twilight Zone.
I might crazy in thinking that the Twilight Zone was always less of a defined style as a collection of short stories dominated by Rod Sterling's voice.
This collection felt like reading someone doing an imitation of Sterling's voice and an imitation that fails to live up the legacy.


You can read my full review here: sitelink comicbastards. com/comics/r Twilight Zone: Shadow amp Substance is a graphic novel that pays homage to the original television series, Like most books that gather a group of small stories together for an anthology, some of truly good and some are not.
However overall this as true a tribute to the theme and storytelling of the original series that I have read in some time.


A good read with good artwork, .