If you would like to listen to the rest of what Mike and I read this week, download our latest episode here: Weekly Pulls: Episode 59
I’m not a huge fan of franchise comic book series. Things like Alien, Ghostbusters, Transformers don’t appeal to me. It seems like comic book publishers pay for the rights and pump out disposable stories, hoping the public buys them on name recognition. The franchises are tired and need a break, and the books I have tried don’t really do anything new. It’s the same recycled stories over and over again, usually playing it safe and not doing anything that will change past events, characters or anything that will become canon. I’ve found all of them to be pretty forgettable, not only because they were boring but because sometimes I want to forget I read them.
Enter The Terminator #1 by Dynamic Comics, written by Declan Shalvey with artist Luke Sparrow. The cover was striking enough to get my attention and pick the book off of the shelf to thumb through it. It’s a first issue with solid artwork and a good cover, so I decided to give it a try. What Shalvey does with this book isn’t going to change the Terminator canon, but it does something more important for the reader: it makes you think.
In this book we pick up after the plans to kill Sarah Connor and John failed, so SkyNet decides to try different routes to battle the human resistance. We follow Harper and Penny, who are on the run and hiding from a Terminator trying to kill them. They know it’s only a matter of time before they are found, but decide to live their lives until that day comes. Can’t help but think back to the original Terminator movie, with Sarah and Reese running from the Terminator with only each other to find comfort in. It doesn’t depend on explosions or gunfights, it leans heavily into the characters and their fear of the inevitable – knowing it’s only a matter of time before they are found and killed.
“It can be long or short, depending on your perspective. It can fly past or drag on, depending how you’re feeling. Either way, you must never forget. It’s coming for you.”
Instead of focusing on the Terminator or SkyNet, it focuses on time. Shalvey uses the Terminator as an allegory for the passage of time, aging, love and the inevitability of death. That slow, creeping feeling of what we all know will happen; waiting for the day that death comes knocking on our door. Or in this case, a robot from the future that will stop at nothing to kill us. If you are missing the more grounded and gritty Terminator, this issue is for you.
