And here's the second collection of classic Terminator stories!
The war against the machines begins here, with these following reviews:
Comic title: Terminator OMNIBUS: Volume 2
Art by Jackson Guice, Steve Pugh, Guy Davis and more
Written by James Robinson, Alan Grant and more
Published by Dark Horse ComicsFrom 2008
Lineup Terminator Series
Format: Omnibus-sized Trade Paperback collecting the mini-series The Terminator Special & #1-4, The Terminator: Hunters and Killers #1-3, a one shot from Dark Horse Presents #138, The Terminator: Endgame #1-3 and The Terminator: The Dark Years #1-4.
The Terminators never sleep. The Terminators never eat. The Terminators don't fear bullets. The Terminators don't feel the darkness.
They're sent to the past to ensure their rise to power.
But humanity's never far behind. We won't stop and let the machines win. As long as there's life, there's hope.
This is the second Terminator Omnibus by Dark Horse Comics. It collects the rest of the original comic books they produced all the way through the 90s until they lost the rights to Now Comics in 2000.
"Hunters and Killers" opens up the book. It occupies most lenght of this collection with about 80 pages. It was written by Toren Smith, Adam Warren & Chris Warner (all of those guys, no less!) with art provided by Bill Jaaska. This three-part tale takes place in Spring 2029, in Siberia. It follows a squad of old Spetsnaz special forces under General Yegorov. The human resistance under John Connor's leadership in America was able to strike Skynet where it hurts. Now they're about to finally get rid of it for good.. that is if its Russian counterpart MIR given awarness through Skynet won't simply take over its network just as well. So they need their Russian allies to get Anatoly Golytsyn to help simultaneously destroy MIR for good. But Sergeant Larissa Bandera seems to notice some unsual behavior on the Terminators' part around Anatoly. And for a good reason. Skynet developed new Terminators model, the TS-300 (Stealth Terminators). New robots using a ceramic endoskeletons and a personality transfer from actual people to better infiltrate human forces. They have been tracking him down as well to use the submarine to strike a deadly last assault on Skynet and take over the network... It's a great post-nuclear Russia story, with a new sort of Cold War running amongst machines. It's actually great to see a Terminator story that doesn't feature Time Travel for a change. And also that takes place somewhere else than in the US as well. With the new Stealth Terminators you also get a bit of The Thing going on. It's a very good story that doesn't seem to stop and yet so little action in it overall. Really great.
Next, we have "Endgame". Written by James Robinson with art from Jackson Guice. It's a three issue conclusion to the storyline started in "Tempest" all the way back in the first omnibus. The story follows the last surviving Resistance fighter Mary Randall now living in the past/present. A new Terminator pops up in the Canadian Tundra to attack a pregnant Sarah Connor and prevent the birth of mankind's savior. She goes back to the half-machine/human hybrid Dudley, but it's too late for him. Meanwhile Detective Sloan is after the "Catfish" serial killer. It all comes down together as Sarah gives birth to a Jane Connor on October 4th, 1984. That's right. The story goes into a sort of "alternate timeline" at this point. But with all the time travel, time-loops and whatnot, everytime someone goes back into the past in the Terminator series.. it might as well just be another variation of the events we didn't see on screen in the movies... My main beef with this whole story is that it several contradicts or retcons details in the previous stories. The original tales took place in 1990 originally. And to center it around the pregnancy it was changed back around the end of the first film. Mary Randall also undergoes a random "T2's Sarah Connor" transformation, getting a lot more muscle, a new haircut and face to be honest. Dudley is quickly dispatched of since they didn't knew what to do with him. With all these changes and departures it could just as easily be made into an original unrelated story from the start instead of "borrowing" assets from these previous comics since everything changed so much... I really loved the art here, the "noir" tone for the story. But it's probably one of my least favorite entries in this book. I'm okay with Jane Connor though, causing a the timeline to differ into a new future, with a better organized human resistance. /although why did that make the Terminator disappear for some reason.. yet keeping Mary in the past?!)
"Suicide Run" is a short story originally published in Dark Horse Presents. It was written by Alan Grant with art by Frank Teran. This one shot is set in the distant future again. Only 10-pages long, it's a very short story with gritty artwork. Desperate times call for desperate solutions. It follows a small group of rebels that are set to destroy an important Skynet tower. A young girl Ali has to be carried over, suffering from disease due to the nuclear fallout. Ali will be playing her favorite music on her music player for one last time.. Not without going out with a bang. All in the name of John Connor. I really enjoyed this one, albeit it had quite a bleak ending. Hey, that's life in a war-torn planet for you! A real little gem!
Then we have another Alan Grant's story, "Death Valley". Originally published as a mini under the simple title of "The Terminator". The first half is drawn by Guy Davis then we have Steve Pugh's artwork in the second part. It follows a pair of T-800 after a family they mistaken for Sarah and John Connor. It takes place in 1998, an ex-cop turned Bounty Hunter Mr. VanDirk is after a senator's daughter. He located her amongst a satanist biker gang(!). When he almost reached the girl, the machines attacked and killed everyone, only to see the leader of the cult Killerman run away. The machines go after him and then we get a non-stop chase across the desert until the end. The Norden family gets thrown into the mix thanks to a little confusion. Both robots thinking them to be the Connors. But as the female model D800.L is focused on her objective, D810.X starts to develop some unexpected personality changes. Thanks to a bug during the deployment into the past, his programming appears to start questioning the meaning of life. And he doesn't even terminate non-threatening humans.VanDirk is able to lead the robots into a trap... I really loved the art through the entire story. The change in the art direction is not even that jarring since the first sketchier and grittier half focuses on the robots' arrival into the past. Then it's a more traditional chase and face-off Terminator scenario in the desert, with fantastic colorful art by Steve Pugh.
Finally we have "The Dark Years", once more from Alan Grant, with art by Mel Rubi. It's a split story, taking place at the same time in both Los Angeles, 2030 and New York, 1999. In the future, as Kyle Reese called it in the film, the Dark Years. And in the past a few years before T3. At the Turn of the Century, John Connor still in his childhood gets chased around by one more Terminator on New Year's Eve's. "Meanwhile", John now in his adulthood faces an invasion of Skynet robotic animal-spies. It's sort of a continuation from Death Valley above since we get to see back the other "John Connor", Jon Norden from the previous story now living in the future as a resistance soldier. Both eras slightly parallel each other (and not even by that much honestly). The real problem here is Mel Rubi's uncanny art, by the end of the story John Connor gets a huge full-on cartoony nose. It gets progressively worse.. Yet there was no change of penciller or inker or whatnot.. The art really distracts from the story, but it's not even that an interesting plot to begin with. The weak link of the entire omnibus in my eyes.
Overall, despite its flaws, it's a much better collection of stories than the first Terminator Omnibus in my eyes.
It covers a much wider range of original storylines with the war against the machines.
Sadly this was the last volume, since Dark Horse didn't make more Terminator material (until recently!).
The writers (mostly Alan Grant!) reallly get to explore the mythos and even expand upon the concepts briefly overseeen in the film series.
They brought in several new ideas, an alternate timeline and we also finally get to see John Connor as the badass human resistance leader we always wanted to see, and not the whiny "always complaining about his destiny" brat he was in most movies/TV series.
I give it:
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