The Terminator #1 - Dynamite Entertainment

THE TERMINATOR No. 1, October 2024

Announced by its New Jersey-based publisher at San Diego Comic-Con, this “blockbuster Dynamite series” clearly had a lot to live up to when it first hit the spinner rack in late October 2024. And fortunately for those numerous fans of James Cameron/Gale Anne Hurd’s billion-dollar franchise, Declan Shalvey’s script for Issue One of “The Terminator” definitely delivers. Indeed, few of this twenty-two page periodical’s readers won’t come away from devouring the book without feeling something for poor Harper and his beloved wife Penny, following their rollercoaster of a ride through adulthood together.

To begin with however, the “acclaimed” creator’s storyline seemingly suggests “Out Of Time” will follow an entirely different route, with an aged woodlander apparently enjoying a spot of fishing in the large pond situated just away from his family’s log cabin. This idyllic moment of peace is then ruined by the old-timer hooking a piece of metal, which appears to be part of a long-destroyed T-800, and nonchalantly throwing it to the side of his boat as he stares into the silently still water. Of course, the potential for such a set-up is for one of Skynet's first cybernetic organisms to suddenly come racing up out of the depths, overturn the poor man’s boat, and mercilessly murder him. But rather cleverly, the Irish author subverts such expectations with a much grander overall storyline.

In fact, for many a bibliophile this comic’s flashback sequence, showing a much younger Harper and Penny fleeing the Pacific Motel in 1979, is just as mesmerizingly penned as Shalvey’s more current plot-thread set in Alaska. True, the newly-wedded couple’s flight from their shadowy stalker has already started, due to the frightening figure murdering both their parents in the recent past. Yet the sheer, pulse-pounding sense of desperation depicted in these scenes as the pair pack some suitcases and charter a small plane to safety is still truly palpable; “This psycho has managed to find us wherever we run to. Always nipping at our heels.”

Most definitely adding to this book’s momentum are artists Luke Sparrow and (Colourist) Colin Craker. Together the duo proficiently provide both the tale’s leading cast with bags of empathy, and should subconsciously cause the odd reader to legitimately mourn with Penny when the elderly woman realises the T-800 has finally killed her husband. In addition, the sheer sense of exhilaration emanating from the panels depicting the flesh-covered endoskeleton desperately attempting to tear his targets from out of a moving aircraft, is quite literally breath-taking.

The regular cover art to "THE TERMINATOR" #1 by Declan Shalvey