Gold Key's Twilight Zone
The Gold Key run of Twilight Zone comics spanned 91 issues between November 1962 and June 1979.
The anthology title (along with contemporary rivals like Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery) delivered three stories every issue, centering around sordid supernatural events introduced by the host's floating head. So, like Tales from the Crypt, but toned down enough to appease the Comics Code Authority, and branded around something people knew from TV.
Twilight Zone was a great fit, since it was a hit show that had already familiarized audiences with the "hosted anthology" format.
But TV show viewers just sat down at air time; the comic book readers had to be sold. As a result, we have a wealth of vibrant covers depicting bizarre events, complete with a little text to spell out exactly how the story's hook worked.
He cheated the artist out of his fee – and the paintings have come to collect!
The fire raging through the forest was HIS sentence of death from the past!
A blinded alien – he needed a human for his eyes!
Some early covers opt for atmosphere, with more muted colors and subdued scenes like the uncredited #4 cover: an alley with a shadowy figure in it.
George Wilson was a steady cover artist from early on – here's a collage of catastrophes he did for issue #13.
Covers tend to follow some general trends: Cops-and-robbers chases, aliens on another planet, time travel to war-torn battlegrounds.
Occasionally, there's a weird cover with little context explaining exactly what's going on, like this one for issue #43.
Turns out that guy was an acrobat who retired after failing a "death plunge" stunt, so he has the skills to save himself when he falls off a building. It's actually a great fit for the format – the ten second deadine is tense for a short comic book story, but too short to work in a TV episode.
(On the whole, I'm not very impressed with the stories themselves for this series, but if you're familar with Gold Key, that might not be a surprise to you)
The covers start getting a little more wild right around issue #45 in late 1972. Here's one featuring street light poles that eat people!
George Wilson spices up this subject material with a big surreal lightbulb.
Here's a non-Wilson cover: Ricardo Villamonte's action-packed wild west cover for #62.
The uncredited #63 issue has a fun perspective.
The uncredited #70 cover might be the peak of the series for wild covers, after the similar abstract art illustration Wilson did for issue #45.
Eventually, the series started reusing covers and reprinting stories, winding down with a whimper. Here's one of the final covers, another George Wilson, for #91.
Cool Links
Neverending stories - Transfer Orbit
Andrew Liptak interviews Thomas Elrod on his debut novel The Franchise, which sounds like The Truman Show if everyone was trapped in The Lord of the Rings. This conversation's mostly about the eternally self-perpetuating existence of modern franchises like Star Wars.
“The Sightings Take Place Only in Their Minds”: Bob Rickard’s ‘UFOs’, 1979 - We Are the Mutants
I never get tired of reading about 70s/80s paranormal kids edutainment books. This writeup includes some great interior illustration by Geoff Taylor, including an eerie alien encounter:
Music rec: Here's a huge playlist of hip-hop/LoFi with a lot of retro sci-fi art on the album covers.
Next Time: Paintings of Paintings