*This review contains spoilers.
ENEMY OF MY ENEMY PART 01
AVAILABLE: March 2020
CREATORS:
David Mariotte (Author), John Barber (Author), Tom Waltz (Author), Alex Milne (Artist, Cover Artist), David Garcia Cruz (Colorist), Gavin Fullerton (Cover Artist).
IMPRINT: IDW
PAGE COUNT: 36
COLOR: FC
IDW Publishing
“It’s Skynet vs. Cybertron in a crossover for the ages!
1984: When a deadly race of machines emerge from another time, will a robotic guardian be able to protect the Earth from a dire future… or will the T-800 fail in his mission to prevent the world from becoming a plaything to the Decepticons?”
Once again we’re embarking on a Terminator story where the Connor’s aren’t the central focus, and though Sarah Connor looks to be a main player… according to the ‘hero’ T-800, her “purpose has been served”.
The story begins in the future war with no human presence, and Resistance HQ is simply commanded and inhabited by Terminators. It looks like the humans are gone and the future war is just SkyNet Vs the Cybertronians, with SkyNet losing the war.
Presumably the humans lost their part in the war some time ago.
The Transformers lore enters the story in the form of the T-800 and Sarah Connor racing to the crashed Ark at Mount St. Hilary (this is where the space cruiser containing Autobots and Decepticons is located) – the vessel crashed into a volcano a million years ago and laid dormant until eruption in 1984; which reactivated the Ark Systems and the Transformers onboard. Utilizing the time-frame of 1984 was a nice logical way to crossover the stories of the The Terminator and Transformers.
Worryingly this T-800 hero smiles all the time, so you could think that The Terminator who starts out in the future war wearing a classic the Terminator 1984 Resistance outfit has spent time with humans, yet this is contradicted by the sheer fact that it asks an Endoskeleton, who is communicating with it in binary code, to start speaking English so that it can practice. The lack of any human life in the future is a big sign that the smiling behaviour is not learned from human interaction… so it doesn’t make sense. As a further example; although ridiculous “Talk to the hand” in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines was a learned moment from the T-850’s acquisition of clothing from the flamboyant stripper. Even though we hate moments like this from Terminator 3, they make more sense than the smiling T-800 in Transformers Vs The Terminator.
The Time Displacement Equipment (or Time Displacement Device as it is referred to in Genisys and this Comic) is the very model/design from Terminator Genisys, which is disappointing – we have already seen artwork in reference to this comic series and most of the artists use Genisys designed Endoskeletons on the comic book covers, despite the fact that this is supposed to be an officially licensed ‘The Terminator’ comic.
The first easter-egg I appreciated, was what looked to be Big Bun’s in the ruins of the future war, which was confirmed by the story arriving in the setting of 1984 when we see Sarah Connor working at Big Jeff’s. Though this may have had more impact had the Terminator: Resistance Video Game not recently executed the same easter-egg with more impact in my opinion.
A big question we’ve received from fans is regarding Arnold and if he is in the comic; as a couple of the covers looked to contain his T-800. We do believe it is meant to be Arnold’s CSM-101 but as we know Arnold charges a lot of money for the use of his face and voice, and most license holders just pass on using him – this looks to be the case here.
This Terminator cracks Arnold one liners, it smiles regularly like Arnold does in the Terminator movies, it dresses like he does in the first Terminator movie, and Sarah Connor even says she is being kidnapped by a psycho german guy – we of course know Arnold is Austrian but hey, 1984’s Sarah Connor is probably not seasoned in the accents of the world.
Overall I am going to say that I was underwhelmed by this issue; from the overuse of eye rolling one-liners that have been done to death, to talking endoskeletons (nothing new to the comics but it still feels off), and a smiling T-800 with no justification for it. There are just too many aspects at play in this comic that I simply don’t like about the Terminator franchise and because of it… well, it lost me.
I feel that even though the majority of the issue is Terminator oriented; it is very apparent that this comic was conceived and put together by Transformers veterans, as the Transformers come off as cool and Terminator comes off as a comedic foil.
I’m sick of Terminator being represented in this way, so much so that I can’t even stand it in comic book form.
The art is colorful, fun, really well done (despite the Genisys issues) and if you want something not very serious in Terminator form then it’s fine but if you want something a little more serious then maybe give it a swerve – though if you’re a completionist and you simply want to add to your collection… you’ll probably want to own it either way.
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You can buy Transformers Vs The Terminator Issue #1 at TFAW
7 Comments
I read it on wednesday when it came out. I have to say it was a complete letdown. The writing was awful, the entire story was terrible. The art wasn’t bad but it isn’t artistic enough to warrant buying the book for. It really sucked and I really don’t think I’m going to even bother reading the rest lol.
Terminator Resistance has been the best terminator thing since T2.
Clearly written by someone who doesn’t understand the terminator lore as it was established in T1/2JD and only takes their cues from T3Rise of The Machines and Genisys (and to a lesser extent Dark Fate)
into the trash fire.
https://www.theterminatorfans.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Guardian-Terminator.jpg
From a serious sci-fi action/horror original into a complete slapstick mockery of it self.
the greatest irony of all is that even with all these clueless, incompetent writers and directors that tried their luck with the series, James and Arnold (post-T2JD) still made things a thousand times worse for this franchise: the former by completely not giving a shit about his baby after the success of Titanic, giving everybody else a free reign to whatever the hell they want with it, while the later by constantly having the hair up his butt to force unnecessary and flat comedy into almost every scene he was in.
Sounds like a pass. Couldn’t have come out at a better time though, what with COVID-19 terminating the mainstream comic book industry.
The two franchises just don’t fit, one is cartoony the other is dark and gritty. I got sick of crossovers years ago though. Was fun when it was done sparingly but they started to mix franchises that shouldn’t be mixed and it hurt the franchises. Even Alan Moore or Frank Miller couldn’t have made this a good crossover. Can’t really think of another franchise that would mix well with the Terminator right now, sure I’ll think of one later though.