Wanders in Alan Land

I’ve put off plugging a pair of books for too long. Both are by fellas named Alan but
they have a deeper connection as well.



Alan Brennert has been a favorite author of mine since before I knew he wrote
prose. Of the literally thousands of Batman stories published by the character’s 50th anniversary in 1989, he’d written five, and DC selected two of them for The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told. I was thrilled to share the news here in 2016 when a criminally overdue Tales of the Batman hardcover collecting his small yet absolutely stellar comics oeuvre spanning DC’s multiverse was announced.

I commended the endeavors of TV critic Alan Sepinwall on the blog last year when his independent newsletter What’s Alan Watching relaunched and this past July in a post on my latest television obsession. You can order his Rod Serling biography, Serling: A Journey into the Twilight Zone with TV’s First Visionary, from the Hachette Book Group website — or directly from that of your own local or favorite bookstore — and if you do so in advance of its publication next week you’ll get an exclusive review of Alan’s #1 Twilight Zone episode upon submitting proof of purchase of the E-book, hardcover, or audiobook. Meantime, Alan’s been counting down what
he considers the series’ best episodes in the month leading up to the book’s release in short videos posted to his YouTube channel and elsewhere.

Brennert was among those interviewed for Sepinwall’s book as not only an admirer of Serling’s but a writer and story consultant on the first Twilight Zone series revival from 1985. His latest collection of short prose, The Man Who Loved the Sea, came out at the end of 2025 and can be ordered in softcover or E-book from the PS Publishing website. More than half of its contents have never been collected before and the rest are from earlier collections long out of print, including Her Pilgrim Soul and Other Stories, whose title tale is a version of one of his Twilight Zone scripts; I was fortunate enough several years ago to find a hardcover copy to replace my beat-up paperback and it sits proudly on my constantly pruned bookshelves alongside Brennert’s prose novels, from the acclaimed Molaka’i to Palisades Park and Time and Chance.

While most of those novels fall into the category of historical fiction, The Man Who Loved the Sea is largely fantasy, sometimes as lightly tangential as magical realism and sometimes a bit deeper but always grounded in character. You’ll find echoes of Brennert’s novels and his comics work throughout. At the risk of reaching unnecessarily to further justify covering both books in this post, I’ll add that, based on discussion of Serling’s experiences in articles Sepinwall has written and interviews he’s given in advance of the biography’s release, they also have in common harrowing looks at the bizarre and mundane horrors of war.

I’m still only halfway into the new Brennert collection. Although I wish I could simply chalk that fact up to the sheer power of the stories, due to the author’s uncanny ability to place his reader so completely within each narrator’s perspective, it’s been harder for me to read or write at length as recent complications in my chronic health battles have compounded my inability to focus. I gave up on novels for the duration in favor of nonfiction and short prose. Now it’s almost exclusively the comfort food of old comics, along with new and increasingly classic television, which to be sure provide delightful stories.

Even if you finish one or the other of either Alan’s endeavor before I do, I hope you’ll leave a comment sharing what you thought.


Related: Isle Be Damned • Batmen Beyond • Just the Beginnings