Twilight Zone/The Shadow #4 (re-post)

Twilight Zone/The Shadow #4

Written by David Avallone

Art by Dave Acosta

Colors by Omi Remalante

Letters by Taylor Esposito

                The Shadow has been passing through dimensions not only of sight and of sound, but of mind. After journeying through the lives of alter ego Lamont Cranston, radio personality and voice of The Shadow Preston Springs, and pulp novelist who was on his way to creating “The Shadow” in print format, the enigmatic emissary of justice returns to his own time and body, seemingly free of the mind-bending experience he had just endured. However, he is not only still in the clutches of an American-based Nazi militia, but The Shadow is also still very much a prisoner of…The Twilight Zone.

                I love a crossover where two franchises/properties that would, at first glance, appear unfit or unsuitable to share a story. Prime examples would be TMNT/Ghostbusters or TMNT/Batman or TMNT/Archie (Yeah, it does seem like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have been part of a lot of weird crossovers, haven’t they?). With Twilight Zone/The Shadow, it seemed strange to have the noir pulp icon appear in Rod Serling’s seminal creation. That is, until you read the story itself.

                Each issue prior to this one has built upon The Shadow’s sense of humanity and compassion in his quest for justice being called into question. In the penultimate previous issue, The Shadow has a discussion with Lady Justice herself.  They discuss what it means to seek justice; that it can’t be done recklessly or foolhardily. There is more to the fight against evil than blood-soaked righteousness. It’s handled in a rather unsubtle, but effective manner. This issue brings the point home with the force of a sledgehammer.

               

                The Shadow, chained up and under guard, manages to use his guard’s anger and fear to manipulate him into helping him. Instead of outright murdering the poor kid, he talks with him to understand why he joined up with the repugnant Nazi ideology. A good line to summarize what The Shadow has learned comes from The Shadow himself when he says, “It’s not enough to stamp out evil. The good must be encouraged.” There is an effective scene where the guard that the hero mesmerizes is then willingly released from The Shadow’s control and set to make his own decisions, even allowing the young man to keep his machine gun so he doesn’t feel totally powerless. All of this pushes forth the notion that, despite all of his power and sense of righteousness, even the most stalwart of heroes can get lost from time to time.

                Justice is not about the satisfaction of evildoers being killed or punished, though seeing the especially repugnant receiving bloody comeuppance can be satisfying. It’s the notion that wicked deeds are not rewarded. As The Shadow often says, “The weed of crime bears bitter fruit.” At the risk of giving sympathy for the devil, we often forget that many of those who commit crimes or acts of evil are angry, scared, manipulated young men and women who felt the world was against them. Their own unfortunate circumstances in life fed into it to such a degree, they would’ve listened to anyone giving them a way to pay back those whom they believe had stolen so much from them. It does not nor could it ever absolve them of the atrocities they’ve committed, but it should remind us that evil doesn’t always reside in an easily dismissible enemy that we can gun down, cackling like a maniac.

                The artwork in this issue was stellar, as with the previous issues. Dave Acosta gives The Shadow human dimensions all the while still maintaining his grim visage and hypnotic glare, judiciously using alternating eye colors to great effect.  He doesn’t skimp on the gore, either. Showing unrepentant Nazis being mowed down in horizontal hailstorms of bullets. The panel placements, especially in the beginning, harken back to more classic styles that were prominent during the golden age of comics, where we’d see The Shadow’s firearms in one circular panel and in another, the door to his cell being unlocked, both panels covering a larger one showing the Shadow shackled to a wall. The action scenes are fast paced and brutal, namely because it’s The Shadow and he isn’t one for screwing around.

                The facial artwork lent itself very well to the inner conflict that both The Shadow and the young Nazi guard had been dealing with. You can see clearly the words being said weighing on the mind of the young man. Even in the first panels where The Shadow begins taunting him about his life, the young man’s resolve shakes until later when it falters completely as this masked man who had so easily controlled him relinquished that hold and let himself be vulnerable. All of it to prove a point, that we must be better than our impulse to give in to blind vengeance, no matter how righteous we may feel.

Twilight Zone/The Shadow #4, ties up the tale nice and neatly, taking two great properties to tell an interesting, if unsubtle, parable of the difference between justice and vengeance, what it means to be human, and how far is too far in the war on evil.