You know I'm not that organized, we could have it every Friday the rest of the year for all I know. Probably not, sure, but...From 1966,
the Twilight Zone #14, cover by George Wilson.
"The Day that Vanished" is longer than most of the TZ stories I've seen lately, an 11-page Dick Wood/Reed Crandall number. An island resort has a strange visitor; a beat-up scientist who claims aliens have invaded the island, and everyone except him had lost a day. The resort manager scoffs, but evidence starts to pile up: the TV listings are a day off, and the Wednesday boat seemingly arrives a day early. The scientist had been diving in an experimental, lead-shielded suit; when everyone on the island was seemingly frozen like stone, and saucers arrived! The scientist tried to fight them off...but should he have?
After four pages with "The Death Car" of Franz Ferdinand, we get "The Lost Genius," which I swear I've seen before--yeah, in
Mystery Comics Digest #12, which has a
ton of
Twilight Zone. Anyway, a child prodigy is making huge advances in music, math, missile launches, whatever; but a strange visitor seems to turn him into an ordinary kid. It's a defensive move by an alien race; but they also figure the kid's probably gonna be happier that way.
Finally, in "The Lost Oasis," the Nazis aren't quite beat yet in North Africa, but Major Von Scharf has had about enough of his cook, Gustav, a peaceful bumbler. He sends Gustav to find a water supply, or more likely die in the desert; but he finds the mythical Garden of Peace, an oasis figurative and literal for soldiers tired of war. Gustav tries to bring water back for the men, but since they weren't ready to leave war behind yet, the water and camels seem to dry up. Gustav suggests, they could go to the Garden, get out of the war; and Von Scharf considers that desertion, and court-martials Gustav. Only a surprise shelling saves him: Gustav makes it back to the Garden, but to the other Germans it's only a mirage. Without water, they're quickly wrapped up by the Allies.
I feel like these have been averaging maybe one "good" story an issue, but I didn't love this one. Still, this might be the oldest single Twilight Zone I have? Which, considering I pay between $1-$3 for most of them, isn't that surprising.
3 comments:
As a big Twilight Zone fan I say keep em coming! I wish IDW had the license to republish all of these stories into trades.
Also, for any other TZ fan, there’s a YT channel I highly recommend watching this month called Channel Awesome. For the month of October, each episode of a season of TZ is given a short summary then reveals the twist ending, along with some production & cast trivia and all that under 10 minutes. This is going to be the last year they do it, but if you subscribe to the channel, you can go back & revisit the previous 4 seasons.
Spoiler alert, but...I've got Twilight Zone posts every Friday until at least December! I know in the past I've hit a couple that were just dogs, but usually there's something interesting. Sometimes that means a weird Hostess ad, sure, but still.
Huzzah!
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