Terminal #1 // Review
Marilyn has been searching for the truth. There are secrets that are deeply hidden and she wants to get to the bottom of them. There's a good chance that she might just be able to do so. She's gotten a hold of a hacker who's gotten a hold of the right information. However, things are beginning to look dangerous. She might be slightly alarmed at what she's about to find in Terminal #1. The writing team of Robert Kirkman and Joe Casey open-up a new series with artist Andy Kubert. Though there is no question that it is extremely derivative, it seems to have some potential.
Marilyn was expecting to learn something. And she was expecting to find out some form of truth. Unfortunately, that truth happened to involve seeing that decapitation of one of the before she was employed in a dark alley somewhere. Her life was clearly as static. Thankfully, her sister happened to be there at the time. Of course, she didn't necessarily know the truth about her sister either. Her sister was able to save her life from the human monster in question. That was the easy part of a difficult part we come later.
Kirkman and Casey manage a really sharp series of scenes. It feels a lot like the X-Men. There's really no getting around it. But it's a horror version of the X-Men. The idea is that there are genetic powers that are locked within individuals. And then when they're awakened into to them, they can do remarkable things. There's an alien intelligence of some sort by the name of Maculox. (Sounds like an antibiotic. Actually it’s a dietary supplement for ocular health…and a surreal alien intelligence.) That alien intelligence is evidently the good guy. And there's a brother would an evil mutant or whatever. It's kind of cheesy. But the horror aspect of it comes across with striking clarity that feels kind of fun.
Of course, Kubert’s art is spectacular. The dark edge of the X-Men feels really stylish in his hands. It's a really solid fusion of horror, war and superhero style science fiction. Very well executed on a whole bunch of different levels. The action. The drama. It all comes a and immersive reality about it. And this is really important because some of what is being presented on the pain, it would look really silly if it weren't drawn really well. (Maculox...as the name would suggest...is giant eyeball.)
There are some twists and turns. Some attempt to subvert traditional motions of this sort of thing. And there are some genuine surprises of the first issue. That's quite an accomplishment for something that's just introducing all of this stuff. But it's introducing all of this stuff as an echo of a rip off of something else. So we would expect us to worry to turn out a certain way, and it turns out in a different way. So there's real potential with that willingness to experiment with a reaer’s expectations. So it's entirely possible that this one could turn out to be pretty good.
