Tuesday, November 24, 2020

No one wants to admit it, but the Sega Game Gear game is the real continuity.

I missed the last film in the theatres, but picked it up on DVD a bit ago and haven't watched it yet; since I know this series has gone the way of Halloween and taken some of the movies seemingly out of its own canon. So, why not read a comic with even more tenuous continuity? From 1995, Terminator 2: Judgment Day: Cybernetic Dawn #1, "Lost and Found" Plot by Mark Paniccia and Gerry Kline and Dan Abnett, script by Dan Abnett, pencils by Rod Whigham, inks by Jack Snider.
There were two Terminator 2 books from Malibu: this one, described as "Present War," and Nuclear Twilight, "Future War." They were four issue mini-series that concluded in a shared #0 issue, because 90's comics. Actually, this appeared to be shortly after Marvel had bought Malibu--or maybe not that shortly; but since I only found both series' first issues in a quarter bin, I'm mildly surprised they lasted to completion.
This is set almost immediately after the movie, with Sarah and John on the run and exhausted. They seek shelter with an old friend, only to learn from his son that he had been murdered by the T-1000 when it was searching for John. Meanwhile, back in L.A. at a certain steel mill, two detectives looking for Sarah are stonewalled by the feds, but learn a familiar looking hand has been recovered by a tech company that had been working with Cyberdyne. An up-and-coming young executive thinks she can use it to continue the work of Miles Dyson; and has put together another unexpected connection: that Sarah Connor wasn't insane, and maybe they should keep an eye on her. That's not for any altruistic reasons, they want to score more robot parts and whatnot. Capitalism, I swear.
While still unsure if they had changed anything, John wonders if altering the future would erase him from the timeline. Still, instead of going to ground they opt to go to Dyson's widow, to tell her what had happened, unaware that more Terminators were even then arriving...The time travel rules in Terminator are a little murky (right, like they're hard-and-fast everywhere else...) but I thought you had to be "covered in flesh" for the trip? Also, changing the timeline does not seem to be instant here; since I think Skynet had made several dozen "last gasp" attempts: every time they're on the verge of losing, they seemingly get another chance, which leads to another, then another...

I had to search the blog for Rod Whigham: I remembered him from G.I. Joe, but he had a run on the first regular Punisher series towards the end. I thought his likeness work was pretty good! Pretty sure they didn't have Schwarzenegger license rights, so those last two are just close-enough guys.

1 comment:

Mr. Morbid's House Of Fun said...

Yeah, GI Joe is where I remember Whigham from, as he drew a good bit of the the series in the 80's until the turn of the decade. He apparently got even better since then to be able to draw the likenesses so well here.
Never owned a Sega Game Gear or Game Boy, as the small Tiger* handheld games were cheaper for my parents to buy, but I definitely played the arcade version of T2 a lot.

I know Marvel only really bought Malibu comics because of their then advanced comic coloring technique/process, but damn did those comic characters get a raw deal after Marvel half-heartedly promoted and put out a several series of theirs. I think Night Man lasted the longest but that's only because of the crappy tv show though.