The Terminator #7 // Review
It’s the winter of 1944. Stalback, Poland. Snow is falling. It’s cold out. The dogs are barking. There are a few guards out on patrol. They run into someone they think is Russian must be cold as hell because he isn’t wearing anything at all. He’s a big mesomorphic guy, though. Seems to be in peak form. That’s a bit strange given the time and location, but there’s something else that’s strange: his eyes are glowing. The guards have no idea what they’re up against in The Terminator #7. Writer Declan Shalvey tells a stand-alone story set in the Terminator universe that is brought to page and panel by artist David O’Sullivan.
The Terminator unit has not difficulty infiltrating the Stalag 1-A. It’s a POW camp that seems to be out in the middle of nowhere. The terminator unit is there from the future. It’s looking for a prisoner named Alekseev. Sure enough, the target is there. It’s not what Alekseev has done or even what he’s going to do in the future. It’s what he might do that has this particular terminator unit sent into the past. The challenge isn’t tracking him down or executing the order. The real challenge is going to lie in getting out of the POW camp without being identified as anything other than human.
Shalvey has a remarkably clip for idea with the overall premise of the story. However, it's way too short to really be able to explore the whole nature of one of these units truly going undercover to do what it needs to do. Theoretically, this would serve as a really good study for a four-issue miniseries or something like that. It seems interesting enough that it could really cover a lot of ground. As it is, it comes across as sketch to a longer story that would seem a lot more satisfying.
The cold isolation of the location is a gift for O’Sullivan. The artist has given a lot of leeway to be able to simply explore the feeling of cold and falling snow in winter as everything seems to be very stark and dreary and gray towards the end of the second war. The action that hits the page can feel really stiff in places. But the overall layout of the issue seems remarkably well executed. And certainly the drama is definitely without any sense of overpowering anger or aggression it can feel very cold. But this is the end of World War III and so it feels like everything's just completely numb. And even the terminator unit seems more than a bit stunned by the nature of things as it all moves with stylish precision through the cold and isolation that has been bound to the page.
There were a lot of different possibilities as to what might happen with terminator units sent into World War II. Theoretically, that could serve as a whole other series. There was a lot going on all over the world during war. It would be interesting to see as a part of a much larger, infiltration into the past from the future. It's been a really enjoyable series. Shalvey has done an excellent job with it. There are another three issues left in the current arc. It’ll be interesting to see where Shalvey and company take it in future issues through the end of the summer.
