Rod Serling has permeated our culture in ways that most people do not understand or even recognize. This graphic biography gives an overview of his life and struggles. It does not shy away from some of his unsavory qualities but it also shows the lasting impression that Serling has left on our culture. As a huge Serling fan, there are few things that I didn't know but the use of the graphic form was perfect for this biography. I think that this book will please Serling fans and newbies alike!

The life of one Rod Serling told in graphic novel form and told by, Rod Seriling. Koren Shadmi's biography of Rod Serling is sure to be a best seller. It really is a beautifully drawn book making the life of a great actor come alive. If you were a fan of the Twilight Zone, find out more about the distinctive voice and the truly interesting man behind it in Twilight Man.

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THE TWILIGHT MAN - ROD SERLING AND THE BIRTH OF TELEVISION: A graphic novelization of Serling’s life. There are facets of his life readers may not be aware of and the art contributes to the impact of those aspects. I am a fan of Rod Serling and “The Twilight Zone” but did not know his history nor the evolution of his television show. He was principled, focused, and fought for his messages to be heard. I was surprised, shocked, and moved during reading—and believe that readers will not only react the same but also learn many things that will influence their future viewings of episodes of “The Twilight Zone”.

#TheTwilightMan #NetGalley

The Twilight Man is a first person retelling of the adult life of Rod Serling. It covers the time he spent in the army thought his TV writing days. The story starts with Rod talking to a woman on an airplane and warps into the scenes he tells her about.
This story is a great introduction into Serling's life, mental health issues and his writing career. He had to work very hard for the things in his life and most of them didn't come easy to him. This book is a great springboard into wanting to read more about him and to track down some of the lesser known works he made. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in The Twilight Zone and wanting to know more about where it came from.

Goodreads Rating: 4 stars

An excellent biography of one of television's pioneers. I knew pretty much nothing about Serling before reading this, but when I finished I came away with a greater appreciation for his works and what he did to try and break the mold of the radio & television industry.

The bio starts off in Serling's teenage years in the military, showcasing his early attempts at creative writing as well as the horrors he witnessed that later inspired both his horror-based imagery as well as the social commentaries he wove into his scripts and stories.

Radio and TV were at the mercy of the advertisers who funded their shows and had plenty of say over what could and couldn't be shown or scripted in a program. Serling disagreed with that--not only did it cause stunted creativity, but it inevitably didn't allow certain observations and commentaries to be made in scripts. After all, something controversial would reflect badly on the brand(s) sponsoring the show! It took many scripts before Serling found the way to write what he wanted while making the commentaries he wanted, and when he did he created one of the most pioneering shows in TV history.

I loved the narrative style of the story and in itself it paid excellent homage to Serling's style and works. The illustrations themselves I wouldn't necessarily call amazing, but they deeply captured Serling's looks and emotions throughout the story, which made it much more powerful.

Definitely a recommended read for anyone who likes television history!

This book was super interesting, especially being someone who loves learning about how famous shows are made. Learning about his life and what he went through to get The Twilight Zone on the air was very informative. I loved it!

THE TWILIGHT MAN: Rod Serling and the Birth of Television, written and illustrated by Koren Shadmi, tells the story of the genius behind The Twilight Zone.
Shadmi, living in India, didn’t see the original Twilight Zone until 2009, but they were smitten. Who was this creator of strange stories?
Covering Serling’s World War II experience is an important part of what made his personality. Shadmi then covers how Serling fell into writing in college, his professional beginnings in New York, and the highs and lows of working in Hollywood.
I highly recommend this graphic novel for readers of biographies, history, and the entertainment industry.
I thank #Netgalley for the honor of reading this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

This is a perfect biographical graphic novel for the subject of Rod Serling. The artwork is detailed and intriguing. And the ending it utterly terrifying. Serling would be proud.

informative and entertaining. enjoyed the artwork. i've always liked the twilight zone but this gave me a new appreciation for serling's talent. can't wait to watch some episodes later!

The author and artist of this work, took Rod Sterling’s life and presented it as an episode of The Twilight Zone. And it was AMAZING. The reader is hooked right from the start. We are on a plane with a long time before landing, and horror of all horrors no one brought a book. So Rod starts telling his story. I had no idea he was a paratrooper, or how hard he fought to control his stories. I knew he wrote with amazing people and sci-fi juggernauts, but everything else was new to this reader. The story is a bit sad, but so were most TTZ episodes. But they made you think. The team behind this book did such an amazing job, a reader hears Rod in their head as they go panel to panel, they picture his iconic black and white works, and evoke the same emotions we get from revisiting the zone. A masterwork of graphic biography for graphic novel readers and everyone else.

The graphic biography is a vexed form because, as with a biopic, you have to capture key strands and themes in the subject's life, but by depicting them – which often results in implausibly programmatic scenes, and lumpen expositionary dialogue. Shadmi cunningly works around this by having Serling telling his life story to someone else, meaning narration can do that lifting, and what we see is for the most part recognisable as life. A curious life, at that, whose early brushes with death – plunging from aircraft as a paratrooper, in the jungle fighting stealth and terror tactics – can certainly be taken as influences on Serling's most famous work. Set against that, the likeness isn't brilliant (he looks far too fresh-faced in this style), and the setting in which he's telling his tale is so very obviously the Twilight Zone itself that one is left hoping for a double-twist which never arrives. As the story proceeds, I learned a lot I didn't know about Serling's life in with the little I did (the smoking, the workaholism, the battles with networks). And I now really want to see his short-lived existential Western. But Shadmi seems increasingly reluctant to use the framing device after The Twilight Zone, meaning we get the genre's besetting annoyances of improbably emblematic scenes, and a hackneyed narrative about how doing ads is a terrible betrayal of one's talent. Plus, while The Twilight Zone is obviously Serling's crowning achievement, it's far too harsh on The Night Gallery.

(Netgalley ARC)

Rod Serling, famous host of the fifties sci-fi anthology series The Twilight Zone, is The Twilight Man.

Beginning his biography with his service in the Pacific theater of World War II, this graphic novel uses pictures to show us Rod’s life. He was diagnosed with shellshock after the war (now called PTSD), which left him with horrific nightmares for the rest of his life. Rod moved from college to Midwest radio to NYC television before landing The Twilight Zone.

The Twilight Man is an interesting step back into a more innocent time. World War II, its aftermath, the end of radio dramas, the beginning of television, McCarthy’s red scare, and conspicuous consumption are all addressed here. Rod definitely lived in interesting times. If you would like to read a bit of entertainment history or like biographies, this is a great choice. 4 stars!

Thanks to Life Drawn, Humanoids, and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

I am not usually one for biography books, but I do really love The Twilight Zone and I figured a graphic novel was much less of a commitment than a prose book of the same length [I have a poor attention span, what can I say]. This was a pretty good story about Rod's early life and his work creating The Twilight Zone. I did like how the author framed it as Rod telling his own story in what was essentially an episode of The Twilight Zone complete with a twist ending.

On the other hand a lot of the information presented seemed very personal and came across as a bit off-putting knowing that this was written by someone after the person in question was already dead. I would hope much of this type of information came from interviews or people who knew Rod, because otherwise the author projected an awful lot of emotions onto him that we have no way of knowing whether he was actually feeling at the time.

Still, it was a pretty good read and it's interesting [and sad] to see how he had to fight censorship his whole life and even at times write for anti-Semitic people who did not want Jewish people in the scripts despite them literally being written by a Jewish man. It's sad that he had to use so much smoke and mirrors to talk about social issues, but ultimately a great show came out of it that people are still watching today.

A man and a woman are on a plane – you know, perhaps 20,000 feet up. She asks him for his story, so he tells it to her and us, featuring as it does a nightmarish time during and after serving in the Pacific theatre, an attempt to make money by writing, first for radio then television, and then suffering with partly self-inflicted demands as the runner of a now world-famous TV show. Yes, Rod Serling's lot was an interesting one – I had no idea about his war record or his ignominious fall from grace into hosting chat shows and doing cruddy adverts – adverts he'd spent a lot of energy complaining about while closer to the seats of power. And while this is a wordy book it's done well – you can see strong visual elements from the show in it where appropriate, and it quotes from the show well texturally too. It may be that it doesn't teach the real aficionado much, but to a general reader (one in this instance who loved this show when it filled early 24-hour TV slots, and when the family was new owners of a VCR) it hit all the right buttons. Four and a half stars.

The artwork in this work were really the best part of this. I was not able to connect with the main story arc and found the characters wooden.

Telling Serling's life story through the medium of illustration is a curious and inspired choice, one I'm thinking the man would probably appreciate. Admittedly, it's a fascinating-enough tale to warrant a weird spin, considering all he went through. I wouldn't even begin to imagine how vast Serling's influence is, and Shadmi's only helping things out by adding this unconventional biography to the table. If you're not being introduced to Rod Serling outright, you're certain to be given a strong tale, buttoned up in a way that it should be.

Shadmi's not pulling any punches: Serling's infidelity, vices, and regrets are on full display in addition to his many successes, giving us the choice to make up our mind about him.

The illustrations are great; I never saw anything that looked like it needed another pass-over. From the standpoint of style, this sticks out pretty well. I realize that, to get things going, many of the conversations had to be simulated/dramatized, but it has the potential to come off as hokey, like a Bible tract.

Again, it's a fine medium for the story of the man's career and life. With Peele's update of the series out and about, I'd reckon this is markedly essential reading, and especially so if you're tuning into that show.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Life Drawn, and Humanoids for the advance read.

I really enjoyed this story of the life of Rod Serling. It was interesting to read about his life and how his most famous creation came into being. While the idea of The Twilight Zone sounds like a no-brainer home run idea, it certainly wasn't as well-received as it ended up being decades later. I think the biography did a great job at showing us the hardship that Rod had to go through to make it as a writer in Hollywood and the struggles he faced trying to keep his writing true and meaningful to his audience.

Aboard a plane, amid cigarettes, drinks and poorly-lit aisles, Rod Serling fulfills a request for tales about his life. He explains to his seat mate that he is an oldtimer and will try to spin a “good yarn.” That yarn would become a spun skein, longer than most. It would lead us back to Serling’s early years, starting from 1943 when he was 18, signing up for war, the golden age of television and his teaching years. First, Serling would fight in the Pacific Theatre, march through the island of Leyte in the Philippines and suffer trauma from seeing his buddies die, before it was all over.

A daredevil, boxer and parachute jumper - Serling is depicted as someone who is stubborn, reckless and unafraid. These qualities would serve him well after the war. As a struggling writer, he is stubbornly persistent. He submitted his first manuscript 40 times before it was accepted. Whenever he isn’t given creative rights over his content, he has a workaround. This is captured so perfectly in Shadmi's diagrammatic boxes: “Both sponsors and censors left me to my own devices. They saw nothing problematic show dealing with aliens and monsters, somewhere off in a distant future. I would burrow into the deepest, darkest recesses of American’s subconscious…harvest dark matter, reshape it, disguise it and serve it back to the masses.” Serling used his script for Twilight Zone as a vehicle to speak out against bigotry, totalitarianism and war. He channeled his critical commentary on McCarthyism, paranoia and war through The Twilight Zone, directly to its viewers.

Each chapter is advanced by the continuing conversation between Serling and his seatmate. Drawings of a daisy patterned boot, empty playground and power lines are wordless but hold just as much meaning as the panel next to it. A man walking across a giant manuscript with proofread markings. His drawings of 20th century media is classic! I especially love the spinning newspapers that reveal headlines. The content within the diagrammatic boxes is typical Shadmi style – eloquent, expository and expert. The shapes of speech bubbles (sometimes in the shape of television screens while he was being interviewed by Mike Wallace) are clever. Diagrammatic boxes are employed whenever a much clearer explanation is needed. And sometimes, we are left in the “fifth dimension”; it’s up to the reader to figure it out.

Unlike Shadmi’s other works, THE TWILIGHT MAN is tame (except for some violence) and does not delve into mature themes. It can easily be read by a young adult audience. In my opinion, it is gold worthy and deserves the ALA Alex Award as well as an Eisner.

ARC Copy...interesting way to tell Rod Serling's life. Serling feels human in his raise to an icon in the TV and Sci-fi realm and a twist ending that feels very characteristic of his works. I'm not giving the ending away!