Terminator #9 // Review
A figure emerges from a fire. He’s got an uzi in one hand and an AR-15-style assault rifle in the other. “Skynet: Activated,” he says. “All targets: Terminate.” That’s kind of his thing. The journey ends here. But where did it start? That’s the real question. Light is shed on the answer to that question in Terminator #9. Writer Declan Shalvey continues a deep dive into the margins of a very popular science fiction franchise with artist Joe Mulvey. Color comes to the page courtesy of Colin Craker. The narrative is a bit difficult to follow as Shalvey and Mulvey roll through it at odd angles, but it’s fairly engaging stuff.
1997. Cyberdine Systems in Los Angeles. A group has arrived looking to dismantle a project in its infancy. That project is going to seriously mess-up the rest of the world in the future. And given that there are a few people in the future with time travel technology...well...it might be a good idea to stop the thing from having been developed in the first place. It’s not going to be easy, though. It’s going to involve a lot of trial and error and a hell of a lot of blood. And, of course, there are going to be killing machines there from the future to try to stop them.
Shalvey renders a remarkably sharp distillation of the spirit of the film franchise in a stirkingly concise single issue. There's plenty of action. And that action really is the center and beating heart of the whole thing. It has a strong sense of momentum. The complexity around the edges of the plot seems kind of incoherent next to all of the action. However, there is very thoughtful work put into the placement of scenes on the page. It's smart work. But it would be very difficult to develop for someone who is not familiar with the franchise.
Mulvey and Craker’s work has a very sharp and defined the comics feel about it. The slickness that one would normally expect from a major franchise, simply isn't there. And that's actually really appealing. The ideas at the heart of the franchise had always been very pretty, dark sci-fi stuff that would work around the edges more popular genre work. So it's nice to see the visuals, the narrative aesthetic at the heart of the franchise. Craker’s color is beautiful. There's a beautiful contrast between the darkness of shadow, the darkness of night and the radiance of the fire that seems to be consuming everything.
Shalvey and Mulvey wouldn't have any difficulty continuing on the series indefinitely. However, this one issue is actually a really good distillation of the entire concept of what it is that's been developed in the heart of the series. And there really wouldn't be any reason to keep going or not for the fact that it's actually just kind of fun saying brutal technology of humanity continued to bang its head against the wall of time.
