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Interview: Lizzy Walker Talks to Koren Shadmi, Creator of Twilight Man: Rod Serling and the Birth of Television

Koren Shadmi

Reviewer Lizzy Walker had the opportunity to Koren Shadmi, creator of Twilight Man: Rod Serling and the Birth of Television,  which we reviewed earlier this year. Thanks to both Lizzy and Koren!

 

Lizzy: Tell Monster Librarian readers a little about yourself.

Koren: I’m an illustrator and cartoonist originally from Israel. I came to the US in 2002 to study in The School of Visual Arts where I now teach illustration. I split my time between doing illustrations for magazines and papers such as the NYTimes, and working on my comics. I live in Brooklyn with my wife and 1-year-old boy.

 

Lizzy: What made you want to write this graphic biography of Rod Serling?

Koren:I discovered the Twilight Zone very late in life, when it first became available to stream on Netflix (I grew up in Israel where the show never aired).

When I watched the episodes, I felt a strong connection to the material and visuals and felt the show was way ahead of its time. I was also curious about the enigmatic host and creator of the show, who would sometimes introduce the show with an eternally lit cigarette in hand. Once I started reading about Serling’s life I realized that there’s a lot of potential here, and it would make for good material for a nonfiction Biography.

 

Lizzy:How did you prepare to create The Twilight Man?

Koren:I read most books that were out there about Rod Serling, as well as books about The Twilight Zone. I also watched an extensive amount of Serling’s work pre- and post- Twilight Zone. He created an immense body of work.

 

Lizzy: How much research did you need to do in writing this book?

Koren: As I mentioned, there was a lot of reading, but I didn’t go as far as to dig through his archives and read old letters. There was already a ton of information out there. I did have to do a lot of additional visual research when I drew the book. The scenes from WW2 were the toughest to draw because I had to find out how things like the equipment, planes, and jeeps looked.

 

Lizzy: You treat the history of Serling’s life and career with respect and honesty. Were there any parts of his life where it was difficult for you to confront?

Koren: Not really. I don’t think he was as unbalanced as some other Hollywood legends, but he did have his fair share of drama. I tried to be balanced and put a lot of the good, and maybe a bit of the bad, in there. There are some books out there that focused very much on his flaws and problems, and I really wanted it to be a mostly positive portrait.

 

Lizzy: What discoveries did you make about Serling through your process of creating the graphic biography?

Koren: Many, I knew very little about him. I especially enjoyed finding out his war story and how it affected his writing on The Twilight Zone.

 

Lizzy:Was there anything you left out that you wish you would have included?

Koren: I wish I could have put in some more of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes but it just didn’t fit into the story. I also did not include Serling’s stint as a public speaker.

 

Lizzy: What challenges did you experience with this book?

Koren: As I mentioned, it was tough to draw, since there was so much reference involved. It’s set in the 40s and up till the 70s. Each period comes with its specific dress code, cars, and settings. I wanted the book to feel authentic, so I tried to base everything on timely reference imagery.

 

Lizzy: If Rod were still alive, what is the one burning question you would have for him?

Koren: Wow, I’m not sure. I know a lot about his life at this point, I might want to hear his production stories on my favorite Twilight Zone episodes. But I would mostly want to hang out, maybe get a drink with him, and just be able to say: I spent an hour with the great Rod Serling!

 

Lizzy: What are your top three favourite Twilight Zone episodes?

Koren: ‘Eye Of The Beholder,’ ‘Time Enough At Last,’ and ‘The Hitchhiker.’

 

Lizzy: I noticed an advertisement on social media about the “Masks, Mannequins, and Monsters” event on Facebook. It sounded like so much fun! Can you talk a little bit about that event?

Koren: It was fun! I brought Arlen Schumer and Nick Parisi—both respected Twilight Zone and Serling—to speak. We each picked an episode and had a little audiovisual presentation to give the audience context and our interpretations.

 

Lizzy: Why should librarians consider purchasing The Twilight Man for their collections?

Koren: It’s a very accessible way of discovering the story of Rod Serling. It’s also a good intro to the history of television and would be great for any kind of media studies.

 

Lizzy: Do you have any upcoming projects that you want to mention?

Koren: I have a book coming out next year with author David Kushner; it’s the story of Anonymous – the hacker collective. It’s very different than The Twilight Man, in that it’s not about one person but about a whole movement and several individuals who were at its center.

 

 

 

 

Posted on December 31, 2019 by , Reply

Graphic Novel Review: The Twilight Man: Rod Serling and the Birth of Television by Koren Shadmi

The Twilight Man: Rod Serling and the Birth of Television by Koren Shadmi

Life Drawn, 2019

ISBN-13: 9781643375717

Available:  Paperback, Kindle edition, comiXology

Koren Shadmi’s The Twilight Man: Rod Serling and the Birth of Television is a graphic biography following Rod Serling’s time in the military as a paratrooper, his diagnosis of “shell shock” and the subsequent nightmares, his rise to fame during the Golden Age of Television, and his life and struggles after the end of The Twilight Zone. The book reads like an episode of  the iconic series. Each chapter is contained within conversations between Serling and an attractive airplane passenger while on a seemingly endless PanAm flight. For those readers familiar with the show, at any moment you expect to see the Gremlin on the wing…

Something that struck me while reading The Twilight Man was that control was a constant in Serling’s work. The entertainment industry deemed him the “Angry Young Man” of Hollywood as he challenged networks and viewers through his stories to show the consequences of war, to reject censorship and racism, and what it means to be human in a messed up world. Only when he wrote his stories in terms of aliens, monsters, and speculative fiction did his work become less threatening to censors and producers.

I would recommend this book to fans of Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone or anyone interested in graphic biographies. Shadmi weaves a great story about a complicated man. The artwork is crisp, and Shadmi captures everyone’s likenesses well. The color pallet changes between these snippets of conversation from blue to black and white when the focus is turned to Serling’s past.

Koren Shadmi, an award-winning illustrator and cartoonist, studied illustration at The School of Visual Arts in New York where he teaches currently. His graphic novels have been published in the US, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Poland, Korea, and Israel. If you like The Twilight Man, look for Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and The Creation of D&D created with writer David Kushner. Highly recommended.

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

 

Posted on December 8, 2019 by , Reply

Book Review: Mary’s Monster: Love, Madness, and How Mary Shelley Created Frankenstein by Lita Judge

Mary’s Monster: Love, Madness, and How Mary Shelley Created Frankenstein by Lita Judge

Roaring Brook Press, 2018

ISBN-13: 978-1626725003

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition

 

After the flood of books about Frankenstein and Mary Shelley that accompanied the bicentennial of the first publication of the book last year,  despite my fascination with both, I was pretty exhausted from reading about them by the time 2019 rolled around, but Mary’s Monster is something special. This verse biography of Mary Shelley’s life is framed by imagined commentary from the Creature itself. While in a text-only format this might not have worked, nearly every page is also a visual feast, pairing Lita Judge’s free verse with incredible black-and-white watercolor illustrations, for nearly 300 pages. The powerful illustrations integrated into the text reminded me at times of A Monster Calls, but that is a fictional prose novel, while this is nonfiction– a detailed verse biography. Judge structured the book into nine parts, to represent the nine months it took Mary to finish writing Frankenstein, and also the same length as a pregnancy. Mary’s thoughts about creation, love, abandonment, despair, and destruction were central to her identity, and she certainly dealt with all of these issues in her own life, from the death of her mother in giving birth and difficult childhood, to her intense relationship with Percy Shelley and her own pregnancy.

In introducing her, the Creature presents her as a complex character, outspoken and imaginative, and commands us to “hear her voice”. Indeed, even though they are not necessarily all direct quotes, the poems in the book are all told from Mary’s point of view, and Judge has pages of notes at the end identifying where she found individual lines. We hear Mary’s voice as shaped by Judge’s perceptions, choices, and words. Through Part 7, we get a relatively straightforward narrative of Mary’s life from childhood through the summer at the Villa Diodati, during which she started writing Frankenstein.  Part 8 starts with the suicides of her half-sister Fanny and Shelley’s wife Harriet and expresses her intense grief over their deaths and the early death of her first daughter in a nightmarish, Goya-esque collage of her internal turmoil, the responses of the very tangible Creature she creates, and the way the two of them are twisted together: he claiming “I am your creature,” and her return revelation, “My creature is me!”

This is not a light read. Mary Shelley’s life was intense, passionate, and difficult, and while Judge doesn’t go into the details, she doesn’t shy away from writing about sexual relationships, suicide, children dying, drug use, and bad reputation (as opposed to a recent children’s book that described Mary visiting the Villa Diodati with “her dear friend Percy Shelley”).  Judge omits any mention of Mary’s wedding to Shelley after Harriet’s suicide, which is, to me, a confusing thing to leave out, although I will grant that it wouldn’t have contributed well to the flow of Part 8, which is focused on Mary’s anger and grief (Judge explains her reasoning in an author’s note). In addition to an author’s note and the notes on the poems, Judge also provides additional information about Mary Shelley and Frankenstein following the book’s initial publication; thumbnail descriptions of the lives of major characters and family members, such as William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron; a list of books that Mary had read, according to her journal; and a bibilography. It’s not everything you want to know about Mary Shelley, but it’s a great place to start. Mary’s Monster is a breathtaking look at Mary Shelley’s younger years (Part 9 ends in 1823, and she lived until 1851), and, although it is targeted at YA audiences, I highly recommend it as a unique title that does an outstanding job of melding poetry, biography, art, and literary criticism into a powerful, magnetic, visually compelling, and well-researched story.

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on March 6, 2019 by , Reply
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