The Terminator #8 // Review
There has always been a plan. This one was called “Operation Family Tree.” With all of the. basic elements of it complete, it’s time for the intelligence to assess precisely how successful it’s been. And what with it being the caser that the intelligence in question is pretty vast, it’s going to be a hell of an analysis in The Terminator #8. Writer Declan Shalvey wraps-up his mini-series tale from before the original Terminator movie. Artist Colin Craker is given quite a range of motion to sum-up the work that’s happened over the course of the past seven issues in a satisfying conclusion.
Every mission in Operation Family Tree needs to be assessed. It’s really only a matter of time before they figure out whether or not what they were doing was successful. Of course...there are going to be problems that are going to be defined and there’s going to be some kind of reckoning. Maybe they can work out some better strategy of some sort. It’s only logical...and the intelligrence running things is nothing if not logical. Of course...logic is a bit hard to focus on where time travel is concerned, so anything could happen.
Shalvey is taking kind of a big chance with the issue. The way he’d had the series planned-out and paced-out didn’t necessarily require a full issue for what was going to be defined in the eighth issue of the series. It really could have been really successsful in just a few pages...or maybe something half the length that it is that could have een included in the seventh issue. If it WAS going to be tacked-on at the end of the seventh issue, it would have felt a bit rushed. As a full issue in and of iteself, it feels a bit sparse.
Craker is given a wide amount of leeway to explore the big finale to Operation Family Tree. There’s real poetry to the way that Craker is delivering the full series retrospective issue, but it lacks enough of a punch to really make much of an impact. There ARE some beautiful shots, though. There are some powerful moments as the AI continues to consider what it needs to do in order to give history the outcome that it’s looking for. So it looks very, very cool in its own way, but it lacks something.
The overall run of the series really makes it feel totally ancillary to the Terminator universe. It’s one of those rare series that really makes no effort to justify itself outside ot the movie franchise that it comes from. And yet...it’s all new material that has no direct connection to the events of those movies. So in the end it’s just kind of a weird prequel that doesn’t have a whole lot fo weight on its own. That being said, it IS quite a bit of fun for anyone with even a passing interest in the movies.
