Terrorwar #6 - Image Comics

TERRORWAR No. 6, September 2023

Described by “Image Comics” as “the strangest chapter yet in the sci-fi horror saga”, Saladin Ahmed’s script for Issue Six of “Terrorwar” probably came as a bitter disappointment to its audience in September 2023, as it mainly consists of just one long expletive laden discourse between the mysterious Doctora Z and Blue City’s sole-surviving freelance Terrorfighters. True, Muhammad Cho and his underpaid crew do momentarily battle a giant Pteranodon-shaped monstrosity whilst riding high aboard a flying luxurious limousine. But this action sequence is cut incredibly short thanks to a single, well-aimed shot at the creature.

Instead, this comic’s American author decides to painfully pad out his twenty-two-page plot with the off-screen deaths of Paulo’s entire squad, the total destruction of Central Command and more swear words than you’ll find at a hospital’s overbooked midwifery unit. Such a technique genuinely proves incredibly frustrating and arguably lazy, especially when Cho’s homicidal rivals were at the forefront of this book’s narrative until an edition or two ago. Indeed, such an almost casual offloading of the thieving, scheming government contractors strongly suggests that the creative team suddenly found themselves with far less time to tell their story than they originally thought – something which also ties in with the publisher's shock announcement that this title was now just going to be an eight-part mini-series.

Just as peculiar though is the unexpected release of Muhammad by the Terrors themselves. The “mind-bending monsters” have clearly established some sort of psychic rapport with humanity’s apparent last hope, as seen by the man’s physical pain when he later witnesses one of his colleagues blast a phantasm to pieces. Yet just why the multitude of manifestations initially withdraw their pink-hued tentacles from his brain is never explained, and instead his escape is simply used by the secondary cast as an excuse to remind the reader that “Paulo’s people are dead”.

Sadly, there debatably isn’t a great deal to celebrate with the look of this comic’s interior layouts either, courtesy of some inconsistent pencilling by Dave Acosta and disconcerting colour choices by Walter Pereyra. In fact, the scene set aboard Doctora Z’s ‘chariot’ so starkly contrasts with the visuals before it that many a reader may well initially believe it to have been crafted by a different artistic line-up.

Written by: Saladin Ahmed, Pencils by: Dave Acosta, Inks by: Jay Leisten, and Colors by: Walter Pereyra