Hoo, boy, we're maybe at the end of the
Twilight Zone comics I had handy; and I seem to recall the cover story here being the dumbest I'd read in all the ones I've posted--you know, I'm going to take that back, that's exactly the sort of thing somebody says in a
TZ story immediately before being messily killed by whatever they were badmouthing. From 1973,
the Twilight Zone #47, cover by George Wilson.
"And Where it Stops, Nobody Knows..." is a fun title at least: a second-story man accidentally kills a night watchman, then gets trapped in an elevator. He gets out, only to have
cheap special effects a magical journey to the past, courtesy of the wizard Zorak. Zorak explains, he had created a temporal portal, but balance had to be maintained: for him to go to the future, someone had to take his place in the past. The second-story man figures, it's better than being on the run from the cops, and helps himself to Zorak's ring before he goes. But while Zorak was in for a surprise, the second-story man is left to find Zorak may have had reasons to leave himself...(Written by Len Wein, pencils by Rich Buckler, inks by Sal Trapani.)
"The Man Who Hated Mankind"...you're going to have to narrow it down, there. And hey, no Rod Serling intro! This was only a four pager, and while I like the set-up, it has a limp twist of an ending. (Art by Jack Sparling.)
The cover story, "Something New in Town" is yeah, still pretty dumb. Like someone had a gripe with urban planning. A salesman finds a small town with new, modern streetlights...but not a lot of people. And the cover spoiled it for you, but again, not much there. The
GCD does consider this one "unusually horrific" for a Gold Key story, and suggests the characters in it might have been 'cast' from classic TV. (Art by Jack Sparling again!)
Finally, "The Space Prize" finds two cosmonauts, about to launch to be the first men on Mars. Andrei is idealistic and excited, while Serge is a cynical downer: assuming they even make it, politicians and such would steal the credit. Serge considers his own theft, since he knows the Americans would shell out for their new propulsion system: he maybe thinks about it too hard, since Andrei can see it written all over his face, and a fight ensues. Serge kills Andrei with a flare gun--a lucky shot that could've gone either way, but he seems excited to have "the first murder in space!" He ditches Andrei's body, and cuts the remote controls, then fires that new propulsion system, which doesn't go as planned, even as Soviet mission control is furious over his defection. The ending vaguely resembles maybe a couple classic episodes, but isn't really a twist or ironic. (Art by John Celardo.)
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