Dark Horse closes out the first of its three stints with the “Terminator” license with the saga’s first crossover: “RoboCop versus The Terminator” (1992). Later, “The Terminator” would cross over with “Aliens/Predator,” “Superman” and “Painkiller Jane,” plus another meeting with “RoboCop.”
Comic-book legends Frank Miller (writer) and Walter Simonson (artist) deliver a strong story that draws on the central aspects of “RoboCop” and “Terminator” lore: In the former case, a depressed part-man, part-machine with a good heart; in the latter case, machines who jerk around the fabric of time in order to kill off mankind.
Miller balances the two franchises nicely, even though he is the co-writer of “RoboCop 2” and “RoboCop 3,” and even though Dark Horse had a bigger stake in “RoboCop”: It was about to lose the “Terminator” license, and it was gearing up for its adaptation of “RoboCop 3” the next year.
But “RvT’s” portrayal of how timelines change is inconsistent with established “Terminator” lore. Miller’s time-shifting ideas are clever, but they also make it hard to consider “RvT” a legitimate part of the mythology. A fan could attempt to shoehorn this story’s portrayal of timeline-shifting into the rules of “Terminator,” but it’s easier to call it a “What if?” yarn.
CHARACTERS
John Connor: Not in this story, although he is the one who gives Flo the mission to go back in time and kill RoboCop, as he’s the key to Skynet gaining sentience.
Sarah Connor: Not in this story.
Kyle Reese: Dead during this time, as per the events of the first movie.
Flo: Unnamed until the end of the story, she’s a resistance fighter who goes through time to kill RoboCop.
Alex Murphy (RoboCop): This part-man, part-machine works for the Detroit PD. In this story, he’s haunted by the knowledge that “his mind would provide the spark that would make (Skynet and) the Terminators conscious.”
TERMINATORS
RoboCop-Terminator hybrids: RoboCop wisely realizes if he can program Skynet, he can program an army of Terminators to fight on the side of humanity.
Man, woman and child T-800s: They come back to fight Flo, materializing at a Detroit Pistons game. Not counting the Baby Terminator in Now Comics Issue 1, this is first Kid Terminator we’ve seen.
Child and dog Terminators: This duo goes back in time to try to convince RoboCop that he is right to wipe out humans. This is the first Dog Terminator we’ve seen since the Now Comics.
Endoskeletons: These shock troops fill the Future War battles.
CONTINUITY
Like many “Terminator” stories, “RvT” features present-day scenes and Future War scenes from whence the time travelers come. It doesn’t give specific years, but we can assume the present is somewhere around 1992. Most of the action takes place on RoboCop’s turf in Detroit, which coincidentally synchs nicely with the Now Comics, which portrayed a slave labor camp in the Motor City during the Future War. “RvT” marks the first portrayal of a TDE facility in Detroit.
In “RvT’s” Future War, humanity is being wiped out by Skynet. Most other portrayals of the Future War up to this point have shown the resistance winning, and those portrayals are always in 2029. So perhaps “RvT’s” future scenes are before 2029 or after 2031 — after Skynet’s big momentum swing as told in the Now Comics.
After it kills the last human, Skynet’s forces travel into space intending to conquer other worlds. The Now Comics had delved into the mystery of Skynet’s ultimate aims and told us Skynet kept some humans alive in order to have a war for its own amusement. Then when the humans become a serious threat in 2041, it makes a push to wipe them out (“The Burning Earth”). But until now, we didn’t know what Skynet intended to do after killing all humans.
Flo, like all resistance fighters, subscribes to the maxim that “no human will kill another, not ever.” As such, she’s shocked by violence-ridden Detroit. Most stories do indeed show humans banding together against the machines, although the resistance did run into some dangerous feral humans in Now Comics’ regular series.
TIME TRAVEL
“RvT” portrays the creation of new timelines as something that individual beings can experience. At the moment when Skynet or the resistance does something to change the timeline, humans and Terminators see their reality change before their eyes as the “shockwaves through the timestream” wash over them, forming a new “time matrix.”
The shockwave effect – shown artistically via ripples in the background — was not seen in any previous incarnation of the saga, but if we’re being generous, we could say it’s not a contradiction but rather a style choice by the storytellers. That’s what I said about the time shift portrayed in “Endgame.” However, in “RvT,” individual beings can not only see the change in their reality, but also REMEMBER the change in their reality, and this most definitely contradicts established lore.
Some examples from “RvT”:
- Human prisoners who are being buried alive with rocks see the rocks change into leaves, and they celebrate their good fortune.
- Flo is being interrogated at the police station when the Terminator head and futuristic gun wink out of existence, and thus the cops realize she is telling the truth.
- Flo returns from the dead at the story’s end when RoboCop resets the timeline for the better by sacrificing himself. To her, it’s like waking from a dream.
The franchise’s more common stance on time shifts is that mortals are not aware of them, either physically or mentally – even when we as readers can see the time shift happening. In “Endgame,” Sloane’s and Mary’s reality changes, but they are not aware of it; when their bodies morph from an old timeline to a new one, their memories change accordingly after a very brief bout of amnesia.
In “RvT,” Skynet’s ability to see the “shockwaves through the timestream” informs its strategy of when and where to send back Terminators. The resistance fighters likewise devise strategies based on their knowledge of how reality is changing.
While good ol’ fashioned TDE platforms are used by Flo and various Terminators (often in the familiar form of last-ditch efforts to change reality), “RvT” also gives us another method of time travel, which is also the saga’s first example of forward time travel. By entering the Skynet central computer, the essence of RoboCop travels forward through time, then he physically reforms himself during the Future War.