Comic review: Twilight Zone- Shadow & Substance #1- Losing is the new winning

Writer: Mark Rahner
Artist: Edu Menna
Publisher: Dynamite
Released: 21st January 2015


If you could go back in time and meet yourself as a child would you stop yourself from doing something stupid that made you what you are today?

Here’s a different way of asking that same question. Would you go back in time to stop yourself from experiencing something that totally and utterly sucked? I certainly would. Suffering sucks, sod all that learning from the experience bullshit. Sometimes, actually most of the times, it just plain sucks when something bad happens to you. Sod the lessons. I’d rather read about them in a book.

Yeah, I know how the argument goes. What if the sucky incident was something that you needed to learn in order to progress and develop on an intellectual, emotional or spiritual level? You know what? Lots of horrible things have happened to me in my life, and the vast, vast majority of them taught me absolutely nothing that I didn’t already know.

Sometimes horrible things happen, and they are completely meaningless. You learn nothing, other than life can be really, really horrible, that people act in ways that make you hate the human race, and that nobody gives a crap about you, at all. 

The only thing to be learnt is that you better dust yourself off and continue, because if you don’t, you’ll die, and nobody is going to give a shit when you do, just the poor saps that have to dispose of your useless, miserable, messed-up carcass. That’s life, that’s the lesson, and if you don’t already understand it after a couple of weeks at school then you’re a very dense individual who will probably spend the rest of his life learning absolutely nothing.

The plot of this particular comic book is posing that hoary old Twilight Zone conundrum, what would you do if you met yourself as a child? Would you stop yourself from doing something stupid that made you the man you are today, or would you do nothing, because the younger version of yourself needs to learn from the horrible experience? You already know my answer to that one. Yes, of course I bloody would do something about it. I’d help my younger self as much as possible. God knows the poor bugger needed some help, and he certainly didn’t get any at the time.

Having said that, there is a major difference between my own life and the character in this book. He’s a successful writer, and I’m a twit writing on a blog. He might be a self-hating alcoholic mess, but he’s a successful, self-hating, alcoholic mess. He gets to do book signings whilst I get to write comic book reviews that are read by a couple of people who accidentally click on my blog.

Am I bitter? Yes, very much so, but at least I don’t have to sit embarrassingly by myself for a couple of hours whilst people mess around on their phones and ignore me. This actually happened to some ‘writers’ doing a book signing in my local bookshop last week, the poor sods. People seriously need to get the hell off their iphones and start reading again if they want to reverse the deliberate dumbing down of our entire species, but that’s another rant for another occasion.

Anyway, back to the book. What do you reckon he should do? Interfere or leave it alone? Should he save his younger self from some self-inflicted misery, because we all know what’s going to happen if he does, right? My guess is that it’ll change his future, and rather than being a successful writer he’ll be some twit writing on an Internet blog. He’ll probably end up writing comic book reviews, or something else that screams loser from every pore and orifice of the body. So what is it going to be? Success, self-hatred and a drinking problem, or failure, happiness, self-respect and a blog about comic books?

Here’s the part of my review where I talk about the actual construction of the comic, and not just the themes, ideas, and all of that other stuff that I’m interested in. Okay, here I go:

The art is a bit shoddy, and the panel layout is occasionally annoying and confusing, but as the story is so simple those problems are easily surmounted, even though reading the book is a far from smooth experience.

The plot contains two contemporary references (about mobile phones/surveillance devices) and the rest of it could have been set in your usual Twilight Zone era of the 1970’s. The main protagonist is two
dimensional, even though we get to see him as a kid, and he’s not exactly very likeable either.

The book succeeds because the original idea is interesting, and not because of the actual realisation of that idea in the comic book itself. I’ll be purchasing the next issue, not because of the art, or the characters, but because of that original idea. Sometimes a good idea is all that you need, and despite all of it’s flaws they have themselves a repeat customer here.

Now back to my blog, back to my unsuccessfully happy life, and back to daydreaming about poorly attended book-signings, girl-friend problems and missed AA meetings. Keep your success. Losers are the new winners. Well, it feels that way to this guy anyway, but what do I know?

Rating: 6/10