Now Comics wraps up its stint on “The Terminator” with its best work. The two-issue “All My Future’s Past” is a prequel to the first movie chronicling the events leading up to the T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Kyle Reese climbing onto the time-displacement unit platforms and traveling from 2029 to 1984.
Writer Chuck Dixon shows solid knowledge of the first film (the only canonical source at the time). It’s particularly interesting to see how John Connor uses his free will to make tactical decisions in what he sees as a fate-based scenario, while also playing coy around his colleagues. The art comes from the single-named Diego (Issue 1) and Delsol (Issue 2) and it’s in the painted style established by Alex Ross on “The Burning Earth.” I prefer the look of “All My Future’s Past,” as most of the scenes are in daylight.
CHARACTERS
John Connor: Sporting a golden mullet and mustache, the resistance leader orders Kyle to lead the attack on the TDU (time displacement unit) fortress, with John’s own unit following. When Kyle volunteers – with no prompting from John – to use the second TDU platform to follow the T-800 back to 1984, John has Kyle memorize the verbal message to give to Sarah.
Sarah Connor: She’s dead during this time.
Kyle Reese: Kyle takes it upon himself to go back to 1984. He says he knows what Sarah looks like, and that will give him an edge against the Terminator, which only knows Sarah’s name.
Lanny: The story’s narrator, a young man from a hidden valley community in the Pacific Northwest, is given a tape recording by a dying Oregon-based resistance pilot containing information about Skynet’s time-travel experiment. Lanny walks 1,000 miles to L.A. to deliver the info to John Connor. Then he joins Kyle’s attack on the fortress.
TERMINATORS
Endoskeletons: These basic units fight the resistance outside and inside the fortress. The resistance fighters call them “gearjammers.”
T-800, model 101: The unit from the first movie (Schwarzenegger) is sent back in time just before the resistance fighters arrive. Upon seeing the Terminator on the platform, a resistance soldier says, “It’s one of the new models! The ones we can’t detect!”
CONTINUITY
“All My Future’s Past” tells of the events leading up to the T-800 and Kyle traveling from 2029 to 1984. Dixon accounts for the different locations in L.A. where each time traveler emerges: The TDU platforms are at different ends of the fortress, about “a klick” apart. The first one is destroyed by Terminators after the T-800’s time-jump, but the resistance then discovers the second platform.
John is armed with the knowledge from his mom, but he plays it coy around everyone. In the first issue, he verbally theorizes about Skynet’s time-travel strategy as if he doesn’t already know what its plan is. Perhaps he doesn’t want to confuse his officers by suddenly pulling out pre-ordained knowledge. In the second issue, he doesn’t explicitly order Kyle to follow the Terminator through time. Rather, Kyle volunteers, noting that he knows what Sarah looks like. As we know from the movie, this is thanks to the Polaroid John gave him.
The story of the T-800 and Kyle (and other time travelers in upcoming stories) entering the time-displacement bubbles will be retold several times in future stories – including this summer’s “Terminator Genisys.” It’s always told a bit differently. The real-world reason for this is that the movies don’t account for the comics and books. An in-universe reason might be that each version of the TDU story exists on its own version of the timeline, which later gets overwritten by later versions thanks to new instances of time travel.
“All My Future’s Past” is consistent with the first movie in that the resistance is winning. A soldier says:
“We’ve wrecked their defense grid. We have the pulse weapons to destroy the terminators. They’re finished. It’s only a matter of time. So the only way they can win is if they rig the fight.”
Dixon provides no explanation for how the war turned back in Skynet’s favor by 2031, the time of the original Now Comics series.
TIME TRAVEL
John orders Kyle’s unit into the TDU fortress first (“Somebody get me Reese. I want an insertion team geared up and ready to move fast”) and then hangs back with the second unit. He keeps in touch via walkie-talkie as Kyle’s unit finds a second platform and Kyle volunteers to follow the Terminator to 1984. So John displays faith that “the future is not set” by positioning Kyle in the right circumstances, but then he lets fate play out.
Throughout “All My Future’s Past,” many characters (even John) wonder whether or not an instance of time travel – particularly if the T-800 successfully kills Sarah — will affect them or the fabric of their reality in 2029.
- Before they reach the TDU fortress, Lanny says: “I just wonder if we’d ever know if we failed. Maybe none of us would even be born.”
- After the Terminator goes back in time, Lanny says: “We’re still here. That must mean something. I guess we wouldn’t know if we changed the past, huh?”
- After discovering that there’s a second TDU platform and that Kyle is prepared to go back in time, John wonders: “If I’m wrong, if SHE was wrong … Well, I guess we’ll never know about it, will we?”
- Only Kyle believes purely in the necessity of going back in time. As Kyle disrobes to step on the second TDU platform, a fellow resistance soldier asks: “Why you? If this doesn’t work, we’ll need you.” Kyle replies: “If this doesn’t work, there won’t be anyone left.”
- At the end of the yarn, Lanny also believes in the necessity of Kyle’s mission. After Kyle time-jumps, Lanny narrates: “We all stand there for the danged longest time looking at the place where Reese stood. It’s like we’re waiting for something to happen. Some kind of change, maybe. But nothing changed for us. There’s still a war going on. We know deep inside we’re gonna win. … We’re looking at the end of an age and the beginning of the second time of man. … Kyle Reese … died before his own birth to free the world.”
We know that the instance of time travel did not alter the fabric of 2029. However, we have no way of knowing if the actions of Kyle Reese are the reason for this. For all we know, 2029 – at least as these characters know it — would’ve stayed the same if Kyle had not gone back in time. By the same token, for all we know, had the T-800’s mission succeeded, John Connor could’ve winked out of existence as the Gods of time made the appropriate adjustment.
“All My Future’s Past” tosses around theories about fate and free will through its characters – much like “Terminator” fans think about these concepts. But it doesn’t give any solid answers.
Comments
Even though the films do not consider any of the comics canon, from your description it sounds like this should be. In fact I could already be considered canon because unless the new movie has a major change during the future scenes then it would fit in perfectly with any movie in the franchise.# Posted By Steve Thomas | 2/27/15 9:37 PM
Agreed, “AMFP” is the definitive story of the battle and time travelers at the time-displacement equipment platforms leading up to the events of the first movie. Only the first movie is accounted for in “AMFP,” but because “Terminator” is a time-travel-oriented saga, one could argue that it isn’t contradicted by “T2.” Rather, “T2” is on a new timeline. The TDE stories that hook up with “T2” are the opening chapters of the “T2” novelization and the comic book series “Nuclear Twilight.”