Number 2593: A key not to own, here in the Twilight Zone

Like my peers in the late '50s and early '60s, I watched television, everything everybody else watched. We watched Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Thriller, One Step Beyond, Outer Limits, and of course The Twilight Zone. Even if one had never watched the latter, today we know that the show’s title has taken on a meaning as part of our speech, “twilight zone” means to me an event that has a level of strangeness, not easily understood. Other definitions may vary, but people know it means something mysterious when they hear the phrase.

There was nothing new about such stories with O'Henry-style endings, but the musical theme and host Rod Serling’s dramatic openings to the the stories have stayed in the culture for decades now...60 years at least.

When I saw a Twilight Zone comic book I snapped it up. I showed this story from the Gold Key Twilight Zone #4 (1963) in 2007. It’s drawn by Alex Toth, and its ending fits into those stories enjoyed by the fans of the Twilight Zone and the genre.