Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Of the three science fiction films of the 1980s in which were successfully captured in graphic novel form, perhaps the one that struck a chord and a sent a distinct chill up the spine the most was The Terminator.
Both Predator and Alien were great films, in the case of the original Alien and Alien 3, they were phenomenal films but The Terminator, captured so successfully by former body builder Arnold Schwarznegger, dug deep down into the psyche of cinema goers and made the idea of a 20th Century Prometheus, one that draws parallels with Mary Shelley’s monster in the novel Frankenstein, turning on its human creators much more close to the knuckle. The film drew on fears of the technological and home computer boom of the 1980s and the very real anxiety and nightmare scenario of knowledge of machines going too far and in that one day, the machines could turn, like Frankenstein’s creation, on its makers.
Dark Horse comics utilise The Terminator to its fullest in a riveting collection of stories which apart from one small piece, the tale One Shot, follow on in a cascade of imagination, well written ideas and a series of artwork that insists be taken as seriously as the original film.
There is something unnerving about The Terminator, more so perhaps than the bug Alien that Dark Horse writers bought to the graphic novel genre. The cold unfeeling eyes, the prime objective to destroy the weakness it saw in humanity, the lack of emotion and most of all the fact that deep down it was only one step away from humankind. Like a mother who sees her child going off the rails but is powerless to act, The Terminator sees nothing but contempt for those who came before it.
With contributions from John Arcudi, Chris Warner, Paul Guinan, James Robinson, Karl Kesel, Ian Edginton, Vince Giarrano and Steve Buccellato on scripts, inks and pencils, The Terminator is a graphic novel to savour. Not only does it have the same forethought to follow The Terminator film and the original Alien picture by having at its heart a female heroine up on which to hang humanity’s hopes but it depicts the hero with very real flaws, flaws which make the novel read with one eye on watching the films all over again to see how Sarah Connor evolved over the two films. For Sarah Connor read the leader of the rebels sent back by John Connor, Colonel Mary. Both women take the idea of feminine ideal, the sense of nurture and care and twist it by introducing to their lives the physical and disturbing image of male masculinity taken to the extreme. As Alien can be seen as the horror of rape, then The Terminator can be seen as what happens when male pride and arrogance in its assuredness, of its complete dominance, goes unbalanced and unchecked by the yin and yang of female/male union.
The Terminator has never really left the cinema goers conscious and with a Terminator 5 offering tantalisingly mooted for the summer of 2015 there is no better way to remind yourself of what the story is all about than by reading a set of stories that take the franchise further that dared be dreamed.
The Terminator Omnibus Volume 1 is available to purchase from Worlds Apart on Lime Street, Liverpool.
Ian D. Hall