All throughout July we’re crowdsourcing an Extra Eisners Reading List from comics journalists and critics. Most weekdays throughout the entire month, we’ll post a new pick we would have liked to have seen nominated for an Eisner. There are so many great comics right now, we’d love to see the Eisners expanded to honor that and diversify the pool of work honored by the industry. Also, as critics and journalists, we don’t get to vote — so this is the next best thing.

Today’s pick comes from Zack Quaintance…enjoy!

One of the bigger surprises for me this year, came in the category of Best Reality Based Work. I actually thought this was a strong category this year, filled with great books like Grass by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, My Solo Exchange Diary, vol. 2 by Nagata Kabi, and They Called Us Enemy by George Takai and team. A notable absence, however, was the fantastic graphic novel, Twilight Man: Rod Serling and the Birth of Television by Koren Shadmi.

As sharp and fascinating as the best Hollywood biopics, this book uses the story of Serling’s life to explore not just his landmark television achievement, The Twilight Zone, but the evolution of TV in general. At the same time, it also asks questions about the relationship between professional success and family, about the sacrifices we need to make to further ourselves in prestige and acclaim. It’s a poignant story filled with so many compelling thoughts and details, that it transcends the basics of its subject matter to hit universality. And I’d have loved to have seen it given the awards spotlight this year.

Zack Quaintance created and edits this very website. He also works as a staff writer for The Beat, and he’s currently preparing his first Kickstarter project for a new comics project, which is slated to launch very very soon…

Twilight Man: Rod Serling and the Birth of Television

The Twilight Man: Rod Serling and the Birth of Television
Writer/Artist: Koren Shadmi
Publisher: Life Drawn
A biographical tale that follows Hollywood revolutionary Rod Serling's rise to fame in the Golden Age of Television, and his descent into his personal Twilight Zone. Before he became The Twilight Zone's revered master of science fiction, Rod Serling was a just a writer who had to fight to make his voice heard. He vehemently challenged the networks and viewership alike to expand their minds and standards-rejecting notions of censorship, racism and war. He pushed the television industry to the edge of glory, and himself to the edge of sanity. Rod operated in a dimension beyond that of contemporary society, making him both a revolutionary and an outsider.
Buy It Digitally: Twilight Man via comiXology

Check out the actual Eisner Nominations for 2020.