Birth of a Bandname, Tales of t/Zone, and local Zone comic spin-off

CONTENTS:

1 – Birth of a Bandname: 50 Local Bands Describe How They Got Their Name

2 – Twenty-Five Local Musicians Answer “What’s Your Favorite Twilight Zone?”

3 - Deepest Dimension: The Inside/Untold Story of a Locally-Produced Twilight Zone Spin-off Comic Book Series, co-created with original Zone writer George Clayton Johnson

DUFF-O-CIDE

"A Duff is a Designated Ugly Fat Friend. They are most commonly spotted within a small group of girls hidden behind a large burrito or super-sized meal. They have a violent temper and must be approached with extreme caution. They get drunk and occasionally hook up with average people. Duffs, beware: This group will no longer tolerate awkward, hung-over mornings waking up next to you...Duff-O-Cide is a union of concerned citizens with a shared goal of spreading awareness about the Duff problem in San Diego, through the use of power chords and guitar distortion." -- Scott Gawlik, lead guitar

WHISKEY TANGO

"Our name is a code that police use to describe white trash. Example: 'We got a 4:20 whiskey tango on the corner of Bixby and Fourth.' Translation: We got some dope-smoking white trash...it also means to do the drunken stumble. When you have a lot to drink and begin to stumble around, you are doing the Whiskey Tango." --Phil Bensimon, bass/vocals.

THE COYOTE PROBLEM

"When we moved into this neighborhood, one of the first things our neighbors told us was, 'We have a coyote problem.' I love listening to the coyotes howl almost every night. It's a beautiful, ancient sound. They're magnificent animals, really, just trying to survive like the rest of us. Coyotes ply the netherworld between the city and the country. They're the ultimate suburbanites. They've been hunting these hills for 100,000 years. We've been here for two hundred. Maybe I should have called our band the Human Problem." -- Peter Bolland, guitar/vocals.

EVE WHITE EVE BLACK

"We chose the name of a Siouxsie and the Banshees song that our singer Amy and I love. It's an aggressive and loud song that captures you with its insane howling by Miss Sioux. The title is also a reference to psychosis and the multiple personalities of a woman who is schizophrenic in The Three Faces of Eve" (the book and film). -- Neva Chiva, bass.

TIGERSHARKS

"There are three types of people in this world: sharks, guppies, and shark bait. Sharks are the doers; they act instinctually and without fear. Guppies are the majority; they lack certain qualities necessary to explore deeper waters and are regularly feasted on by sharks. Shark bait tend to be young and female, and even the mightiest shark must realize that, while tempting, shark bait can actually be quite dangerous. We chose to name ourselves after the most stylish shark in the sea: the homey wearing the stripes." -- Travis Hunter, guitar/vocals.

VIII FRAUD

"Our band name was taken directly from the pages of Dante's Inferno. Our songs are about people in the different levels of Dante's conception of Hell. We're completely secular -- I'm not even sure if any of us really believe in Hell, or gods for that matter, but humans make an interesting study, and humans live to f--k things up. According to Dante, the eighth level of hell is for the fraudulent, the liars, the panderers, and the false flatterers. I think that covers nearly the entire human race." -- Jen Otis, vocals.

THE BUZZKILL ROMANTICS

"In my last band, I started to gain a reputation for anti-enthusiasm, eventually acquiring the nickname Shruggs Buzzkill. But that's pretty bland on its own, eh? Everything I write is about the downside of love, the exultation of passion, and the conflict between reason and emotion. Hence Romantics, [although] more Edgar Allan Poe than Valentine's Day." -- Jason Hee, guitar/vocals.

ZONE 4

"Our first guitar player was an architect, and he noticed most of the buildings he drew up around here need to have a certain rating to be able to stand up to an earthquake. Seismic zones are labeled one through four, with the numbers representing increasing risks and magnitude of damage likely to occur due to earthquakes in those zones. Here in San Diego, buildings have to be rated to withstand a 'zone 4'--type quake." -- Jim Popeney, guitar/vocals.

THE PLOT TO BLOW UP THE EIFFEL TOWER

"We're a gang of Jews and homosexuals [who] draw our main inspiration from the rioting queers at Stonewall, babies throwing temper tantrums, the Hell's Angels at Altamont, and really ugly, greasy sex noises...we're proud of that p-ss waterfall that got us banned in Baltimore. So we took the [band] name from a book by rock critic Greil Marcus called Lipstick Traces, because we figured he might write about us if we plagiarized him." -- Brandon Welchez, vocals/saxophone.

BORBORYGMUS

"[It means] bowel sounds, the gurgling, rumbling, or growling noise from the abdomen caused by the muscular contractions of peristalsis, the process that moves the contents of the stomach and intestines downward. The group has been rumbling around the San Diego area since 2000. The sounds they make are the perfectly normal gurgles and growls from the belly of the musical underground." -- Marcos Fernandes, percussionist/improvisation.

ABIGAIL'S ATTIC

"Our first bass player grabbed a dictionary, and I did too. We started at A. She came up with Abigail, and I came up with Attic. An 'Abigail' turns out to mean 'a woman's servant' -- weird sh-t. At every show someone yells out, 'Who's Abigail?' and we show them our mascot doll. She always sits on the bass drum. Abigail is a cutie pie who aspires to front her own all-mascot band someday." -- Val Easterbrook, guitar/vocals.

MIDDLE-EARTH ENSEMBLE

"Besides being an obvious rip-off of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, the name also describes the style of music we play. Looking at Earth from space, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Europe all come together in the Mediterranean, literally meaning the 'Middle Earth.' A lot of our music is derived from the Middle East. Also, Led Zeppelin had an influence on us. They had a lot of Middle Eastern elements in their music, as well as many lyrical references to Tolkien...we do instrumental covers of a few Zeppelin tunes." -- Frank Lazzaro, drummer.

BLOODBAT

"It started as a Kinko's error. We originally called ourselves Bloodbath, but the first time we had show flyers printed up, they cut [the flyers] at the wrong size and cut off the H. We went ahead and got a refund from Kinko's, but we kept the name Bloodbat because we're goth, so blood and bats make sense. All our [song and album] titles now play on existing titles...our Christmas album was I Saw Mommy Ripped by Satan's Claws." -- Jose Torres, guitar.

KETCHIKAN

"The three indigenous Pacific Northwest Indian tribes are the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian, who considered northern British Columbia and southeast Alaska their territory. Ketchikan has two meanings in the common native tongue among these tribes. Depending on how it's pronounced, it can either mean 'sound of bird's wings' or 'stinkpit.' We tell girls it means sound of bird's wings, and we tell guys it's stinkpit." -- Jarad Johnston, guitar/vocals.

B-SIDE PLAYERS

"San Diego is an odd place to grow up if you are Chicano...in my personal opinion, Chicano culture in San Diego is considered a novelty. It has been designated simply to a park in National City and similar areas were you can't deny the overwhelming presence of the people who live there. These are the barrios of San Diego. They were designed to keep a culture and a race of people segregated from the rest of America; glass menageries to keep novelties like Mexican culture in. There are other cultures in similar situations here, to be sure, but Mexico is in our blood, so this is who we represent. We are the Brown Side Players, and we are taking the culture out of glass cases and displaying it to the rest of the world." -- Russell Gonzales, saxophone.

RETURN OF MR. BLACKSHIRT

"The name came from a person I used to work with who only wore black shirts. Just a normal T-shirt, not a uniform or anything like that. He wore the same black shirt every day or he had a closet full of black shirts so he could wear a clean one every day. I never had the nerve to ask him, and the legend grew from there. So he left the company for a while, and after a few months he came back to work. Thus, the Return of Mr. Blackshirt." -- Mike Eckhart, guitar/vocals.

A WEEKS WORTH

"A week is the cycle of our life's routine. We work in this cycle, plan in this cycle, count the time that has passed, and even use it to justify our behavior. Some people promise to themselves this week will be different, while others enjoy a steady routine. Seven days can mean as much as the creation of the world or as little as the menial accomplishments many strive for in their work lives. Either way, a week's worth is what you make of it, just like everything." -- Danny Geiger, guitar/vocals.

DAMARU

"The Damaru is a two-sided percussion instrument that is shaken with two balls striking the membranes as part of spiritual practices in Tibet, India, and Nepal. The most powerful Damarus are created from human skulls, as described in Mickey Hart's book Drumming at the Edge of Magic. These drums are known to have mystical powers and can wreak havoc if placed in the wrong hands. In Hindu philosophy the Damaru is the drum held by Shiva through which the universe is created. The Damaru symbolizes the mystery of manifestation and the evolution of the cosmos." -- Frank Lazzaro, drummer.

TALL

"I was watching an episode of VH1's Behind the Music about the Black Crowes, talking about the Robinson brothers' rocky relationship and how at one point it boiled over as they were completing one of their studio albums. The fight came to blows, and one brother took the masters from the studio and threw them in the garbage. The name of that [Black Crowes] album was going to be Tall, which is a euphemism for getting high." -- Stuart T. Smith, vocals

HOLIDAY AND THE ADVENTURE POP COLLECTIVE

"Holiday references both vacationing and the great Billie Holiday. When Louis [Caverly] and I began working on old and new songs and decided to 'get the band back together,' therein lies the collective. When put together, our name combines the specific with concepts, dreams, and great escape. Think 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.' "-- Derric Oliver, guitar/horns.

PRIDEBOWL

"We started in 1994 in Sweden. I'm American and the other four original members were Swedish. After learning a few punk covers and adding a few originals, we were ready to play our first gig in the tiny town we lived in, Varberg, but we needed a name. After some long, weird drive through the country, the word 'Pride' popped in my head. Then I thought about how the Swedish bandmembers loved to bowl, since that town's six-lane alley was probably the only local place one could find people having fun on any given day. So we came up with the name 'Pridebowl' and said it over and over until it didn't make sense anymore. We really wanted a name that wasn't in the dictionary." -- Aaron Goulding, vocals

THE ROSERY

"One morning I went out to a family IHOP breakfast with all my relatives. My grandma pulls out this giant box of sheet music, old hymns, and popular singles you and I have probably never heard of that looked like they survived the Holocaust -- most of them did, dated around the 1940s. One sheet of paper literally started to crumble as I picked it up -- a chorus girl's résumé with a list of songs she knew. 'The Rosery' was one of the numbers listed, and Rose happens to be my mother's and my grandmother's middle name." -- Lucas Coleman, guitar/vocals

INNERLIMIT

"Our name comes from the idea that the percentage of our brain that people use today is a fraction of what it should be. We have a lot more potential than we can even conceive. Television, media, and the government are all key players in the dumbing-down of the human race. Innerlimit dares one to explore the known realms of thinking...to create a better world." -- Drew Bent, vocals/percussion.

SIMEON FLICK

"I was named after an Indian boy that my father treated at a domestic psych ward during the Vietnam War...this eight-year-old boy named Simeon had a rare pituitary dysfunction that matured him too early so he was, in effect, a boy trapped inside a man's body. I could probably say the same about myself. People I meet are often disbelieving at how rock-and-roll my name sounds, to the point where I actually say I didn't have it legally changed or anything. I just had cool quasi-hippie parents." -- Simeon Flick, guitar/vocals.

STOLEN

"Our name came from the foothills behind our neighborhood in El Cajon. Eight years ago the property was sold to build a new housing development and a Wal-Mart. The hills were a part of all of our childhoods...we felt as if they had been stolen from us. We decided to carve 'Stolen Hills' in one of the concrete slabs in remembrance of the hills. When the band formed six years ago, we shortened the name." -- Erik Clabeaux, bass/vocals.

A PARK TRADITION

"Our three founding members, John, Nick, and Scott, all grew up in a town called Newbury Park [California], where absolutely everyone is in a band. You could go to a show somewhere almost seven nights a week and always have a friend or two playing. It might be because there's not a whole lot else to do there. When we moved to San Diego for school and realized not everyone is in a band or is supportive of new music, we thought we'd keep up our town's tradition here." -- Nick Norton, guitar/vocals.

FAT MAN'S MISERY

"One, I've been playing guitar for 35 years, and this is my first blues band. I've primarily been in progressive rock bands. Two, I'm fat. Not just a little overweight, but at my heaviest I was 431 pounds. It makes me very different from most people. The alienation and pain of being generally looked down on by others is something that is part of me, part of my guitar playing. Three, I am a very proud second-generation native of San Diego, and Fat Man's Misery was a place in Torrey Pines that my sister the bass player and I used to go when we were kids." -- Lee Loveless, guitar/vocals

SHOESTRING STRAP

"When our outlaw country/bluegrass band first moved from playing living rooms to having actual gigs, our mandolin player Keith borrowed a strap from our bass player Kent. One day Kent wanted his strap back. You would think a mandolin might have smaller strap pegs than a bass, but not so. It stretched out the [strap] holes so much that Kent's bass would fall off, repeatedly, onstage. Keith still didn't want to buy a strap for some reason so I offered to give him a shoestring as a strap. We also wanted a name that's impossible to say drunk." -- Dave Lowenstein, guitar/banjo

TRAVEL AGENTS

"The name was adopted from a classic Dragnet episode that dealt with psychoactive drugs like LSD, and 'travel agent' was a term for someone who guided you on your trip, so to speak. It could refer to a dealer, or also a spiritual guide, such as a Timothy Leary type. The show was so absurd and comical, with the Dragnet cops asking tripped-out dopers, 'Who's your travel agent, kid?' Since the band does psychedelic music in the style of the Grateful Dead and other bands from that era and genre, we decided it was a good fit. Ironically, I have since become an actual travel agent." -- Frank Lazzaro, drummer.

FUNKY POX

"Three of us in this seven-piece funk, soul, and R&B band are biotech research scientists, including one Ph.D. The name originated from a lyric in the 1973 Tower of Power song 'Soul Vaccination.' We promote our band as having infectious grooves, and not just because the bassist, keyboardist, and guitarist spend our daytime hours researching viruses and enzymes." -- Fred Kokaska, guitar/vocals.

WOODEN BADGER

"All of us in the band are huge Monty Python fans. The name is a reference to a scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where Bedevere's 'Trojan rabbit' idea fails because they forgot to get into it...Bedevere says, 'Um, look, suppose we built this large wooden badger...' " -- Tenacious Lee, vocals

7TH DAY BUSKERS

"Busking is a European term for performing on city streets, subways, and at outdoor markets for tips. Before I moved to San Diego, I spent two years in Amsterdam and Ireland as a street musician, playing for tips. I stood out a lot in both places, since I was probably one of only two or three banjo players in the whole country.... When I formed the band here, we had no name at first, it was just a rotating roster of musicians who played -- busking -- at the Hillcrest farmer's market. We still play there every other Sunday, the seventh day." -- Shawn Rohlf, banjo

MAKAI

"Makai was formed in May 1988 when seven out of the nine members of Devocean left that band due to financial disagreements. Makai in the Hawaiian language means 'towards the ocean' or 'ocean side of the island.' When someone says the Makai side of the island, they mean near the ocean. Since the makeup of the band at that time was mostly islanders and because we had just left Devocean, we decided on Makai. People who have never heard us play sometimes think we play only island music." -- Benmar Felizardo, vocals

NETZER

"Netzer is Hebrew for 'branch.' While you don't normally associate a branch with hard rock, this word has a special symbolism for us. The biblical prophet Isaiah talks about a branch from Jesse who will rule with righteousness. We believe that this refers to Jesus. Plus, 'Netzer' sounds cool." -- David Kasdan, bass/vocals

TUBBY

"I was asked to put together a band for the Sandbar, so I called a bunch of people I'd always wanted to play with. We met the night of the gig, and I realized we hadn't bothered to come up with a name. The Sandbar had an even smaller stage back then, so I was practically sitting on this big plastic storage tub. Hence, Tubby was born...we still can't agree on a better name." -- Neil MacPherson, keyboards.

THE GRAMS

"We got our name from the notion about how the human body loses a total of 21 grams weight upon death and how this is attributed to the weight of the soul leaving the body. I constantly discuss soul matters in my lyrics, so when we heard that notion we knew we were about to sniff out our new name. We were drinking beer at a gig when it came to us." -- Chuck Schiele, guitar/vocals.

THE SHAMBLES

"Ray Brandes and I were doing an acoustic thing we had dubbed the Fiascoes...Manual Scan was on hiatus around that time, and Ray and I decided to put a band together. One of our first attempts included former M. Scan drummer Brad Wilkins. We were tossing possible names around at a rehearsal, and as a joke we started to riff off of the fiasco theme. Every stupid name got a good laugh, until Brad said 'the Shambles.' We all just stopped and looked at each other. It was us. It was perfect." -- Kevin Donaker-Ring, guitar.

WILLIE PSYCHO

"It has nothing to do with my recent hospitalization for alcoholism and depression...it's 'cause I always do something psycho at our shows, like 'moshball,' where I toss a football into the mosh pit and watch 400 people go at it. The security guards at the Masonic Hall really hated it when I did that, but we paid for all the broken tables." -- Willie Psycho, vocals

JON KANIS: "If I had to pick only one of the 156, I'd probably say 'The Dummy' starring San Diegan Cliff Robertson and written by Rod Serling, a contemporary master of the morality play if ever there was one. Honorable mentions to 'Shadow Play,' 'Time Enough At Last,' 'A Game of Pool,' 'To Serve Man,' 'Person or Persons Unknown,' and 'The Masks.'"

STEVEN BRADFORD of Get Back Loretta: “The one with the guy who has the watch that stops time, and then it breaks and he’s all alone.” [A Kind of Stopwatch]

RICHARD VAUGHAN of Silver Sunshine/Astra: “The one where there is a human-looking Martian hiding out in a diner from the police [Will The Real Martian Please Stand Up?]. When all of the humans finally leave, the Martian brags to the cook about his species' plans to invade Earth. However, the cook then reveals that HE is in fact from Venus and his species has intercepted the Martian fleet.”

CONOR RILEY of Silver Sunshine/Astra: “The episode where a lady is living on Earth and it’s heading towards the sun [The Midnight Sun]. It turns out to be a dream and, when she wakes up, the earth is moving farther away from the sun.”

ADAM GIMBEL of Rookie Card: “Living Doll. Telly Savalas is great, having such a hard time with the Talking Tina doll. My mom went to Rod Serling's high school in Ohio.”

JD BOUCHARDE: “Living Doll. ‘My name is Talky Tina, and I think I hate you.’ Dolls that kill. Yowch.”

DYLAN MARTINEZ of Rookie Card: “Either the one where the state is going to execute a librarian for being obsolete [The Obsolete Man] or the one where the man opens a jail cell and ends up letting the Devil loose on the world [The Howling Man].”

JASON BANG: "The one where the guy is in charge of keeping the Devil locked up [The Howling Man], but since the Prince of Darkness is such a smooth talker, he's able to convince his captor to release him."

MARK DECERBO of Four Eyes and Rockola: "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, The Midnight Sun, The Masks, It’s A Good Life, The Invaders.”

BART MENDOZA: "For me, it was It's a Good Life, with Billy Mumy as the monster - there are scenes in that where nondescript things are happening in the background. I saw the original and that was creepy enough, but when I read the story the show was based on - yikes! The TV show nailed it, yet kept the gore quotient zero. That one and The Howling Man, which not only gave us the devil, but also a Ron Silva fronted band."

PETER BOLLAND: "The one where a very young Robert Redford plays Mr. Death [Nothing in the Dark]. Edgy and sweet at the same time."

MARCIA CLAIRE: " 'The Eye of the Beholder,' a.k.a. the 'Everybody Has a Pig Snout Except Me' episode."

GREG LASWELL: “The one where masked surgeons unwrapped a beautiful woman from her bandages, and they all shrieked at how ugly she was, and then the camera cut to shots of them without their masks on, to reveal that they were the deformed ones.” [Eye of the Beholder]

HANK EASTON: “The episode where everyone has a disgusting pig face and they all feel sorry for the beautiful lady ‘cause they think she’s hideous.” [Eye of the Beholder]

DANNY CRESS: "The baseball one [The Mighty Casey], about this team called the Hoboken Zephyrs with the robot pitcher Casey."

JENN GRINELS: “Time Enough at Last, the one where some sort of nuclear devastation leaves a lone man on the planet. All he wants to do is read. He finds a library, and he's in heaven! And then he promptly breaks his glasses. Oh, Hell.”

ERIC NIELSEN of High Mountain Tempel: “Time Enough at Last. Burgess Meredith’s wife finds his reading a waste of time. She asks him to read her some poetry, and he finds out she has blacked out all of the pages. He escapes to the bank vault to read a little at work, when he hears atomic bombs falling. He’s the last survivor on earth and is ready to commit suicide, when he stumbles onto a library and realizes he has all the time in the world to read. And, thus, he wants to live.”

JAMIE RENO: “The one in which airline passenger William Shatner is completely freaked out by a gremlin on the wing of the airplane [Nightmare At 20,000 Feet]. This one was remade effectively with John Lithgow in the Twilight Zone movie. This is probably why I still never want a wing seat.”

CASEY GEE: "I love the one with the little gremlin guy who lands on the plane wing, but only one passenger can see him [Nightmare at 20,000 Feet]. Probably because whenever I catch an episode, that's the one that comes on."

BILL FARKAS: “The one about the big-mouthed guy who never stopped talking as a member of that private men’s club, and a seemingly rich dude bets him ten grand that he can’t keep quiet for a year [The Silence]. Then, after the guy did it, you found out the rich dude was really a phony and couldn’t afford to pay the bet. The O-Henry ending was the guy had his vocal chords severed, just to win the bet.”

JOHN MEARS of Crash Carter: "The one with the astronaut who lands on a planet inhabited by tiny people that treat him like a god [The Little People]. He has the ability to leave but stays to rule over the people as he's now drunk with power, only to have another space traveler land moments later. Of course, the new visitor is thousands of feet larger than him."

PETE BAYARD: “A Little Peace And Quiet [1985 series], where some girl can stop time. At the end, she stops it seconds before Russian bombs impact her town and you can see the missiles hovering over the houses. She’s all alone wandering around with everyone else frozen and it’s her task to decide when she’s bored enough to release the missiles and thus kill her entire town.”

JAY ALLEN SANFORD: "I'm really partial to George Clayton Johnson's stories - especially Game of Pool, which can effectively be staged without even needing set walls, just two good actors and a pool table. Both Jack Klugman and Jonathan Winters give the best performances of their careers, which is really saying something!"

GAYLE SKIDMORE: “My favorite is the one where they try to give the guy plastic surgery because he’s so ugly. He ends up being a regular looking bloke while everyone else looks like pigs. Genius.”

JON BISHOP: “When I was a kid, the whole theme song and Rod Serling narration freaked me out too much, so I changed the channel.”

JEFF BOWMAN of Tower 7: "Impossible to answer. I like them all."

MOLLY JENSON: “I'm not sure I've ever seen a whole episode all the way through, and if I did, I don't remember it. Ask me which Punky Brewster episode was my favorite and I could answer that in a flash.”

In the early ‘90s, I wrote and edited a comic book series called The Deepest Dimension Terror Anthology, the brainchild of original Twilight Zone writer George Clayton Johnson. It was published by Hillcrest-based Revolutionary Comics, best known for Rock ‘N’ Roll Comics.

(Johnson: photo, Christine Lyons)

George had already long been one of my mentors. Among his many Zone triumphs:

Kick the Can (old folks turning young again, remade for the Zone movie)…

…A Penny For Your Thoughts (Dick York hears thoughts after flipping a coin on its side)…

…The Prime Mover (Buddy Ebsen uses telekinesis in Vegas)…

…Nothing in the Dark (Robert Redford as Mr. Death)…

…A Game of Pool (Jack Klugman VS Jonathan Winters)…

…All of Us Are Dying, and more.

(George Clayton Johnson on the set of Nothing in the Dark)

George also wrote the original pilot for Kung Fu, starring David Carradine…

…he scripted the early Star Trek episode that introduced Dr. McCoy, The Man Trap (remember the Salt Vampire?)…

...as well as co-writing the original Logan’s Run…

…and, of course, writing the Ocean’s 11 story for the original Rat Pack film.

Each Deepest Dimension comic adapted a story by George, as well as tales by friends and contemporaries of his like Psycho creator Robert Bloch, sci-fi legend Larry Niven, horror author Dennis Etchison, I Am Legend author Richard Matheson, and others.

The first issue included George’s “Ring of Truth” and a Larry Niven story.

Art was by Vampire Lestat comic painter Daerick Gross, Matthew Alice artist Rick Geary, Zap Comix co-founder Spain Rodriguez, Dr. Bang creator Lyndal Ferguson, DepositMan artist Larry Nadolsky, and other high profile, in-demand and ultimately EXPENSIVE artists, whose salaries made the Deepest Dimension three times as expensive to produce as any of the other dozen or so titles we were publishing at the time.

George himself hosted each issue, depicted in opening panels ala the Crypt Keeper…

The SECOND issue was where the Twilight Zone connections really unfolded. George’s story “Sea Change” was purchased by Rod Serling for the original Twilight Zone series. However, the show was cancelled just before a sixth season went into production.

It was a huge thrill for me, a devotional Zone fan, to work on the comic version of this (terrific!) Lost Twilight Zone episode.

(George promoting DD at Comic-Con, along with publisher Herb Shapiro – we came across a Zone pinball game, decorated with images from a bunch of George’s episodes! He’d never seen it before - I couldn’t resist taking some pics as he played it!)

Another Zone story was chosen for the next issue…George’s “Execution,” which WAS filmed for a Zone episode, albeit one radically different from the original story George wrote and submitted to Serling….

“Execution” was the one starring Gilligan’s Professor, Russell Johnson, as a scientist whose time machine accidentally brings into the future a western outlaw who was in the process of being hanged for his crimes when plucked from the past. One of the memorable scenes is when the hombre is shocked by the sight and sound of a jukebox, so he shoots it.

For the Zone episode, George’s story was adapted by Serling himself. And changed. A bunch. George has expressed displeasure over the televised result, tho he’s too gentle and diplomatic a man to rant and rail. During our conversations, we talked about the very different story he’d wanted to tell, and he ended up lending me an old typewritten draft of his original story, with pages affixed by a rusty old paper clip.

It was my job to adapt GEORGE’s version, for the Deepest Dimension! To re-envision a classic Twilight Zone, as the original author intended it to be...man, I’ve lucked into some amazing gigs….

Sadly, the “Execution” comic story never made it beyond the script phase, as the series was cancelled after two issues, in part due to that aforementioned cost factor. Here's a sample of the script (I may someday post the whole script online, but note it was done the old fashioned way, like George's original story - on a typewriter! There's no electronic version...):

Presented for your perusal…a selection of rarities from the Deepest Dimension archive, including unpublished artwork, alternate versions of the Zone-inspired logo, actual script pages, behind-the-scenes photos, and a few other goodies I dug up just for this blog …

It was through Deepest Dimension that I first met the legendary and mercurial author Harlan Ellison. I’ll retell a tale I shared in an earlier blog on this…

Ellison and I were both booked to sign autographs at a 1994 Atlanta comic book convention. Seated near each other behind a conference table, I was mostly signing copies of Rock ‘N’ Roll Comics while Ellison promoted his upcoming Dream Corridor comic book. During one lull, I showed him a Deepest Dimension issue, featuring an illustrated adaptation of a short story which Ellison had published in his own “Dangerous Visions” anthology book -- "A Toy For Juliette” by famed "Psycho" author Robert Bloch.

Ellison's mood visibly darkened as he thumbed through the comic. "Nobody told me about this," he growled (and I do mean growled – think Schwarzenegger finding a parking ticket on his Humvee). He made the line of autograph seekers wait while he carefully read the comic (illustrated by Matthew Alice's own Rick Geary) from cover to cover.

I could almost see the thunderclouds forming over his head as he got to a brief scene that hadn't appeared in the original text story from “Dangerous Visions.”

"Who the f--k gave a no-name son of a b--ch like you the right to rewrite Robert Bloch?" he fairly shouted, so loud that people in line visibly flinched. "You put his f--king name on the cover, every g-d-mned word of this story should be by Robert f--king Bloch."

Ellison went on berating me without pause for another half minute (so I’m told – I was sure it was a half hour), his voice and gorge rising in tandem as he eloquently, if profanely, defended the sacrosanct nature of Robert Bloch’s storytelling.

Finally, running out of oxygen - if not epithets - he paused for breath, and I was able to tell him "I spoke with Robert Bloch about the comic script and he's the one who suggested the change and the new dialogue."

In a bipolar rush of reversal, Ellison’s scowl was replaced by an unctuous smile as he closed the comic book and handed it back to me with feigned grace. "Oh, well, why didn't you say so? In that case, I love it. Good work."

Ellison turned to the crowd of onlookers, bowed with Shakespearean theatricality and said "Every one of you should buy this Deepest Dimension comic. I highly recommend it."

(Psycho author Robert Bloch)

Here’s the never-published pencil rough of a Toy For Juliette scene: the middle page NOT written by Bloch is what so-incensed Mr. Ellison (art by Matthew Alice/Heavy Metal/National Lampoon cartoonist Rick Geary) -----

Note the post-it from Robert Bloch himself, SIGNED, approving of the adaptation! Below is pencil version of the “Juliette” title page...

...and a printed copy from my collection, signed by Bloch.

Unpublished Deepest Dimension art by Daerick Gross, intended for a comic adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ Vengeance of Nitocris.

Unpublished art for adaptation of George Clayton Johnson’s original Twilight Zone story, “Execution”:

Ad for unpublished issue.

REJECTED LOGOS: Top illo is what we ended up using for the comic. The other versions were ultimately rejected ----

COMPLETE STORY FROM DEEPEST DIMENSION #1: The art is by Zap Comix co-founder and occasional Reader cover artist Spain Rodriguez.

(Deepest Dimension editorial proof)

(Above: pencil rough of Zone pinball machine header, final version below)