Advanced Review: The End Is Nigh In ‘The Twilight Zone’ #10

You’ve probably heard the story of Japanese soldiers on a remote Pacific island in the 1970s who didn’t know World War II ended decades earlier.

Writers Rosemary Soule and Charles Soule take that concept and give it a twist worthy of The Twilight Zone, in the anthology series’ latest issue.

In A Life Well Lived, Leah and Anabelle are two college sophomores suffering through a frat party when they implausibly stumble upon a series of underground tunnels on campus. They eventually run across a pair of sequestered soldiers who control a doomsday nuclear strike against the former Soviet Union. The co-eds trigger a countdown and try to convince the soldiers that they are students not spies and that the Cold War has been over for decades.

The Soules’ story feels true to the original television show, although it’s missing a “gotcha” ending. Similarly it’s difficult to take any lessons away from tale, though in fairness not all the original episodes had a moral. Still, the issue feels a bit uneven with some filler material.

Artist Sean Peacock’s illustrations serve the story well. Most of the back-and-white issue features panels that aren’t heavily detailed, focusing on the character’s expressions as they plead to stop the world-ending disaster. But Peacock shows off in some larger, more intricate splash pages, for example, where he shows how the two soldiers were able to survive for decades locked in a small room. The whole thing is unbelievable, but this is The Twilight Zone after all.

In times like these, it feels entirely possible that a couple of college students’ missteps could accidently trigger the end of the world. In this case, let’s hope life doesn’t imitate art.

The Twilight Zone #10 — written by Rosemary Soule and Charles Soule, illustrated by Sean Peacock, and lettered by Jeff Eckleberry — will be available Wednesday in comic book stories and on digital platforms from IDW.