David Avallone talks Twilight Zone: The Shadow #3 (of 4), on sale in June from Dynamite.
BYRON BREWER: David, we are arriving in June at the penultimate issue of this mini, #3. Have you told the story you set out to tell, and is there anything with #4 approaching that you would have done differently?
DAVID AVALLONE: Short answers: yes and no. Thematically I told the story I set out to tell. On a page by page basis, there were all sorts of surprises for me in how it unfolded. Given more time there’s always something you might have done another way. Each issue had a unique premise and setting and characters and I could have picked one and done four issues on that … but I wanted to keep it fast paced, and make each issue feel like it was about the length of a Twilight Zone episode. A thirty-minute one … not one of those hour-long Season 4 episodes.
BB: In your writer’s imagination, if Rod Serling had written this 4-issue mini, what might he have done differently in a Twilight Zone vein, do you think?
DA: As writers go, Rod Serling is one of my idols, so I have no doubt he’d have done things much differently. He might have pushed the allegorical aspect more, tied the Shadow’s crisis of conscience more explicitly to current controversies about the use of force against evil, about torture, about innocent bystanders, about “collateral damage”, about extra-judicial crime-fighting. But mostly he would have done it better.
BB: What other characters, and especially the pulps, would you like to give the “Twilight Zone treatment”?
DA: The Shadow is my favorite pulp character: I was lucky enough to start off with the one I’d most like to see. I could continue the vigilante theme by putting Batman through the Twilight Zone. Or maybe Batman AND Superman… in a world where Rod Serling wrote and directed a blockbuster about both of them. Setting my own ego aside, and thinking about Dynamite comics, I would love to see David Walker do “Shaft in the Twilight Zone”. That would be an amazing comic. Right now, if there was a character I’d like to put through the “Twilight Zone treatment” it’s Donald Trump, but I have to wonder if he’d learn anything.
BB: I know this is a bizarre story on both counts of its franchises, but – BUT – if there were a thread to pursue into another comic coming from this, what would it be (by your choice)?
DA: I’d probably have the Shadow fall into the Twilight Zone much later in his career. Maybe get a job consulting on a television show in the late 1950s …?
BYRON BREWER: David, we are arriving in June at the penultimate issue of this mini, #3. Have you told the story you set out to tell, and is there anything with #4 approaching that you would have done differently?
DAVID AVALLONE: Short answers: yes and no. Thematically I told the story I set out to tell. On a page by page basis, there were all sorts of surprises for me in how it unfolded. Given more time there’s always something you might have done another way. Each issue had a unique premise and setting and characters and I could have picked one and done four issues on that … but I wanted to keep it fast paced, and make each issue feel like it was about the length of a Twilight Zone episode. A thirty-minute one … not one of those hour-long Season 4 episodes.
BB: In your writer’s imagination, if Rod Serling had written this 4-issue mini, what might he have done differently in a Twilight Zone vein, do you think?
DA: As writers go, Rod Serling is one of my idols, so I have no doubt he’d have done things much differently. He might have pushed the allegorical aspect more, tied the Shadow’s crisis of conscience more explicitly to current controversies about the use of force against evil, about torture, about innocent bystanders, about “collateral damage”, about extra-judicial crime-fighting. But mostly he would have done it better.
BB: What other characters, and especially the pulps, would you like to give the “Twilight Zone treatment”?
DA: The Shadow is my favorite pulp character: I was lucky enough to start off with the one I’d most like to see. I could continue the vigilante theme by putting Batman through the Twilight Zone. Or maybe Batman AND Superman… in a world where Rod Serling wrote and directed a blockbuster about both of them. Setting my own ego aside, and thinking about Dynamite comics, I would love to see David Walker do “Shaft in the Twilight Zone”. That would be an amazing comic. Right now, if there was a character I’d like to put through the “Twilight Zone treatment” it’s Donald Trump, but I have to wonder if he’d learn anything.
BB: I know this is a bizarre story on both counts of its franchises, but – BUT – if there were a thread to pursue into another comic coming from this, what would it be (by your choice)?
DA: I’d probably have the Shadow fall into the Twilight Zone much later in his career. Maybe get a job consulting on a television show in the late 1950s …?