"Time" I finally blogged this one! (Absolutely feel free to boo this title...)

I had to look up if this really was, like I'd thought, "early" work from the great José Luis García-López: tough to say when he actually penciled it, but he had already racked up some art credits at DC by the time this hit stands: from 1976, the Twilight Zone #70, featuring "The Tyranny of Time!" No writer credits, nor credits for the very nice cover. Finally coughed up for a reader copy of this one! And I actually did plan ahead, scheduling this for after Daylight Savings...

You may have sometimes felt like you were going insane at your job, but Joshua Wise...is going insane at his job. Working on an assembly line making watches, he isn't even sure what this stupid part he keeps putting in even does, and the passage of time seems "to drag like dripping honey!" Time felt elastic, slowed down at work to get more work out of them: his very patient friend points out, if that was the case, why is it the same time outside when they leave work? Um, conspiracy, obviously! Wake up, sheeple!

Joshua begins to feel like he wasn't a clock-watcher, clocks were watching him! (Please do not do a Yakov Smirnoff voice there.) He starts to formulate a theory: in olden, less-industrial times, people lived at their own leisurely pace. But in the modern age, clocks tell people when to go, when to stop, when to eat, when to sleep...Joshua has a nightmare, where clock-faced robots put a familiar-looking part, in people's heads: a remote-control device! But, he saw the building, with the master clock, and knew what he had to do. Step one: get his gun.

A month later, Joshua's friend visits the cops; since he'd gone missing. (You thought he'd gone straight to work with his gun, didn't you?) His apartment had been full of crazy notes about clocks and robots, and the cops figure he just went nuts...except both their watches have just stopped. Rod Serling closes with "Coincidence, officer, or has Joshua Wise just won the first round in an epic battle--that may well decide the fate of all mankind--fought in the Twilight Zone?" Man, godspeed, Joshua. I'm pulling for you.