Terminator #6 // Review
Cameron had a sense of humor about Schwarzenegger as a covert robot sent from the future to sneakily kill a woman in 1984. There’s no way a guy like this is going to be able to sneak around looking inconspicuous. But maybe looking like a famous bodybuilder from the 2th century was part of the design. Writer Declan Shalvey gets into some of the AI psychology and philosophy of the offspring of Skynet in Terminator #6. Artist Lorenzo Re brings Shalvey’s thoughtfully-rendered script to the page with colorist Colin Craker. It’s a remarkably concise and thoughtful look into the deeper parameters of the dark AI.
The model of Terminator that was based on a bodybuilder/film actor who went on to become the governor of California was a T-800 unit. There were earlier models, though. When the AI was looking to send terminator units through time, it had a hell of a lot of trial and error to try to work through. Lots of failed attempts...and attempts that failed for some pretty interesting reasons. Skynet knew that it was going to need something versatile that could make it through the stresses of time travel and still make it out the other side intact enough to carry-out its programmed mission.
Shalvey could really expand this one issue into a whole series. It would be fascinating to see how the AI of Skynet worked in developing Terminator units and to come up with different solutions to different problems that arose in the process of putting these things into the field. What Shalvey puts together into the script of a single issue, though, ends up being really, really fascinating and almost poetic in its concision that start with kind of a cool and campy sort of an observation about creators and creations that actually ends up being one of the more provocative things Shalvey’s written for the series thus far.
Re could have really amplified the simplicity of the action in the issue as Shalvey’s script rushes through a whole bunch of little failed episodes. Rather than trying to make it come across with any sense of silly cartoonishness, Re does a straightforward rendering of the script that is every bit as sharp as the script itself. Craker’s colors add considerable depth, mood and radiance to the page on more than one occasion.
The Terminator franchise is remarkably silly on countless levels. The prominence of the franchise as a sci-fi cultural touchstone belies the fact that it’s really just an awful “B” movie premise at heart. Shalvey takes it alll seriosu enough to try to actually do something with it that could be insightful and philosophical on more than a fewe different levels. In an age where AI is threatening to take over rather a lot of the world around us, Shalvey is taking another look at the franchise in a way that could actually lend itself to something a hell of a lot deeper than Cameron ever would have considered back in 1984.
