"Rescue Reviews" are reviews that I wrote for a well-known comic site (that shall remain nameless) that I worked for years ago. Now that the site in question has become more of a. . .how shall I say. . .comic RELATED site, I've decided to pull these from their dusty and hard to find archives, polish them up a bit, and put them in a place where people who still care about comic BOOKS might enjoy them.
ANYWAY. . .
What we have here is an interesting little relic of its time, featuring the first professional work of ridiculously famous comic artist Alex Ross (or Alexander Ross, as he's credited here). This "Rescue Review" is based more on an original draft I had saved than the severely-edited published version, so it's a bit longer than some of the other Rescue Reviews, but not quite as long-winded as future Longbox Junk entries.
On a re-read of the comics themselves, I pretty much agree with what was originally written in the review, so I'll let it stand with just a bit of spit shine and some new pictures. Let's do it!
ORIGINAL INTRO:
Welcome back to 1990. A distant, long-ago time without internet and where people apparently didn't understand the concept of "Backup Power Generators". It was a time when they didn't know there were going to be several movie sequels to The Terminator, so Terminator comics could pretty much do whatever they wanted. Oh. . .and welcome to superstar artist Alex Ross' first professional comic job!
TERMINATOR:
THE BURNING EARTH
NOW Comics (1990)
SCRIPTS: Ron Fortier
PENCILS: Alexander Ross
COVERS: Alexander Ross
ISSUE 1
WELCOME TO HELL
Yep. . .it's signed! They're ALL signed!
Right out of the gate, let's get this out of the way. . .this is NOT the Alex Ross we all know and love.
This is ALEXANDER Ross's first professional comic work.
It's not bad at all, it's pretty damn good, really. . .but it's not superstar Alex Ross as we have come to know him. It's dark and pretty muddy in some spots. It's a LOT rougher than his work to come. The lines aren't sharp and defined in his more well-known hyper-realistic style. This book looks like he drew it with colored pencils. That said, you can see flashes of brilliance to come here and there. It's not BAD, but it's not what you would expect seeing Alex Ross' name on it.
Wait. . .is this Battlestar Galactica?
The story is as dark and grim as the art. It's 40 years after the first Terminator movie (this book came out before T2, so it has nothing to do with the timeline established in later films. It's based on the first movie ONLY) and John Connor is a grizzled, grey-haired warrior tired of fighting to the point that one scene shows him with a gun in his mouth wishing he could sleep for more than an hour at a time. Pretty brutal. No "Hasta La Vista Baybee" quips in this book.
I have to say I liked this first issue a lot. If you read it, you just have to come into it with the viewpoint that ONLY the first movie existed at this time. I have high hopes for the rest of the series.
If there's one thing I really have to complain about. . .and really it's more of a questionable thing. . .it's that Ross doesn't draw the Terminators like they were in the movie, with the skull-like heads and skeletal metal frames, but more like. . .Cylons? They have red-lit slits for eyes and helmet-like heads. It's just a strange thing that makes me wonder if Ross even watched the movie.
ISSUE 2
A BETTER MOUSE TRAP
This issue has the best cover of the series. . .except for one thing. I actually mistook the white highlights in her hair for fingerprints (I bought these at a flea market so I wouldn't be surprised if they were), but when I looked closer I saw they were intentional.
Those rough spots on the otherwise fantastic cover carry over into the issue itself. The art veers from awesome to crap from page to page and even sometimes from panel to panel. There's only two humans who are distinguishable. . .Connor and DeVerona. Connor because of his gray beard and long hair and DeVerona for his eye patch. I'm going to have a hard time caring for the inevitable deaths to come if I can't even tell the characters apart.
The story itself switches perspective to that of Skynet when it decides that allowing 3.7% of humanity to survive means that its programming is flawed and decides it's time to repair that flaw with some close range nuclear bombing.
I'm still liking this a lot. The second issue is not as strong as the first, though. . .and the subplot of Skynet creating sexy woman terminators (like the one on the cover) just seems like an excuse for Ross to draw some awesome D-Cups because "Aurora" is actually the most detailed art in the issue.
Chest Size Parameters: Optimal Distraction
ISSUE 3
KING OF THE MOUNTAIN
The quality of the art takes a serious dip in this issue, with hardly any flashes of the brilliant artist to come to be found. The entire issue is extremely dark and muddy. At first, I was like "It's raining and at night. Okay." But then one of the humans yells out "Sun's going down. We don't want to be out here after dark!" And I was like, "This is supposed to be during the DAY? What the Hell, Alexander Ross?"
Wait. . .what? You mean THIS is supposed to be during the day?
And then there's still the Cylon Terminators. I'm wondering if Ross even watched the movie before coming on this project. If not, then maybe he should have. . .
Still, all things considered, despite the rough art, this was a pretty good issue as the human resistance gathers their forces for an "all or nothing" assault on Skynet's main terminal at former NORAD base "Thunder Mountain". There's a lot of great military action in this issue as Skynet becomes aware of the assault and human casualties mount.
The art improves a good deal in this issue over the last. Unfortunately, the writing takes a turn for the worse as the humans assault the Skynet CPU and its power station in separate teams. Once again, I find it hard to care for any of these characters, as they are hardly distinguished between in either the art or the story.
ISSUE 4
THE LAST DAY
The art improves a good deal in this issue over the last. Unfortunately, the writing takes a turn for the worse as the humans assault the Skynet CPU and its power station in separate teams. Once again, I find it hard to care for any of these characters, as they are hardly distinguished between in either the art or the story.
There is a decent sense of urgency, but there is also a bit of ex machina as Skynet's nuclear bombs dropped on Phoenix are so powerful they cause seismic disturbances that weaken it in NEVADA.
Skynet is located in a NORAD base modeled after Cheyenne Mountain. A base created specifically to stand strong if a nuclear bomb is dropped directly on top of it. If "Thunder Mountain" is in Nevada, earthquakes from the bombing of Phoenix, Arizona shouldn't even bother it.
Then there's the idea that "Thunder Mountain" is powered by an outside power station and has no internal backup power. Ridiculous.
Still, despite having to suspend disbelief twice in 32 short pages, it's not BAD. . .it's just sort of lazy and not well thought out.
And here we are at the big finish!
Unfortunately, this series ends with a whimper after it started with a bang. A damn shame.
Where Ross's art slumped a bit, then quickly improved, Fortier's writing went on a steady decline after a great setup.
I'm not sure if the blame can be placed on 1990 and that the internet as we know it didn't really exist at the time, but to base the climax of a story where the villain is basically a supercomputer gone mad on "If we just turn off the power, the computer is defeated" just seems so ridiculous that it pretty much ruined the ending for me as the human forces did exactly that. . .turned off the power by blowing up a power station. And there wasn't a backup power source in "Thunder Mountain". They just. . .switched off Skynet, shot the hell out of a computer monitor, and won the day.
Then there's the idea that "Thunder Mountain" is powered by an outside power station and has no internal backup power. Ridiculous.
Still, despite having to suspend disbelief twice in 32 short pages, it's not BAD. . .it's just sort of lazy and not well thought out.
ISSUE 5
THE HEART OF SKYNET
And here we are at the big finish!
Unfortunately, this series ends with a whimper after it started with a bang. A damn shame.
Where Ross's art slumped a bit, then quickly improved, Fortier's writing went on a steady decline after a great setup.
I'm not sure if the blame can be placed on 1990 and that the internet as we know it didn't really exist at the time, but to base the climax of a story where the villain is basically a supercomputer gone mad on "If we just turn off the power, the computer is defeated" just seems so ridiculous that it pretty much ruined the ending for me as the human forces did exactly that. . .turned off the power by blowing up a power station. And there wasn't a backup power source in "Thunder Mountain". They just. . .switched off Skynet, shot the hell out of a computer monitor, and won the day.
Didn't they have backup generators in 1990? I realize the writer may not have understood the concept of "Internet" or "Cloud Storage" as we do today, but one has to wonder if Fortier understood the concept of "generator".
Then there's the whole "Aurora Model Terminator" that was introduced in issue 2. I think I called it right as an excuse for Ross to draw some D-Cups because after the big introduction, she was forgotten until this last issue, where she caught a grenade and was unceremoniously blown up. But hey, at least she looked great!
CONCLUSION
All in all, it was. . .okay.
The suspension of disbelief in the last two issues pretty much ruined the ending for me. I'd still suggest this mini, if just to see how far Alex Ross has progressed. The story itself isn't bad, it's just not great, and can't really be considered part of "Terminator Canon" because about everything in it was gone with the release of T2 a few years later. Well. . .at least we got a superstar artist out of this, so the good outweighs the bad.
2019 RE-READ COMMENTS
For what it is, this is actually a pretty good little piece of Longbox Junk. It's a quick-reading hard sci-fi military story set in a brutal, dark future. Yeah, there's some lazy writing and extreme suspension of disbelief needed toward the end, but at the end of the day it's a decent sequel to a movie that nobody thought would get a sequel (Let alone 5 sequels and a T.V. series).
I bag on the art in the original review quite a bit, but when I talked to Alex Ross at a convention a few years back and asked him about it, he told me that when this series was done, he was 19 years old, living at home with his parents AND working a regular 9-5 job. He actually regrets that he wasn't able to do a better job on this.
Alex Ross' thoughts toward this story are that it was a humbling experience that he wasn't prepared at all for but the lessons learned led him to greater things. His attitude toward this series sort of made me see it in a different light when I realize it was done by a 19 year old kid living in his mom's basement and wondering if he'd ever make it as an artist.
Hopefully the first Longbox Junk Reader Request Edition will be finished.
If not, then another fabulous Rescue Review! Either way. . .
Be there or be square!
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