Now Comics’ run of “Terminator” stories makes a significant jump from mediocre to widely lauded with the five-issue mood piece “The Burning Earth” (1990). This is because the painterly art comes from Alex Ross, who was only 19 at the time (the same age as Sarah and Kyle in the first movie!) but has gone on to widespread respect in the comic book community.
Writer Ron Fortier continues his mixed-bag writing. The assault by John Connor’s team on the Skynet headquarters in Nevada is clear, but some of the specific elements are hard to follow. And it’s odd that he introduces a cool concept in Issue 2 – a female T-800 named Aurora – but doesn’t do anything other than add her to the ranks of Skynet’s defensive units.
John, who narrates the yarn, notes that “It’s been raining for two weeks. I don’t even remember what the sun looks like.” Ross gives us five issues that are basically set in the ruined environment of the first movie’s Future War. By the end, a reader feels drenched in the post-apocalyptic nightmare, which I suspect is the primary goal of “The Burning Earth.”
CHARACTERS
John Connor: Often called “Bear,” the 57-year-old warrior – who looks like a scraggy Jesus with a red headband — leads an endgame strike against Skynet’s Thunder Mountain headquarters when it becomes clear Skynet intends to launch a wave of nukes to end humanity once and for all.
Sarah Connor: She’s presumably dead during this time. John mentions that Sarah had told him about the Skynet HQ being located in the Rocky Mountains.
Kyle Reese: He is dead during this time, as per the events of the first movie.
Tim Reese: Kyle’s kid brother, now 24 years old, is a key member of John’s team. He is mute due to having his tongue cut out by a Terminator in the regular Now series.
Miguel De Verona: Nicknamed “Patch” due to his eye patch, John’s childhood bud is his second-in-command. He tries to keep the dour mood light. When a fellow soldier asks him “What’s so damn funny?,” he says: “Everything. Don’t you see? Soon we’ll all be dead. Once you accept that, what else is there to worry about?”
Other characters: Various other resistance fighters from the regular series, including some of the escaped death-camp inmates from Issue 17, populate John’s strike team. None of them pop off the page as distinct characters.
TERMINATORS
Endoskeletons: These basic units patrol the interior of Skynet’s Thunder Mountain headquarters.
T-800s: These basic infiltrator units are the HQ’s perimeter guards.
Aurora: This specific T-800 is notable for being a woman. In a testing session against human captives, she kills one of the men while kissing him. It seems Skynet is testing out a more subtle form of infiltrator. In being a female Terminator, Aurora is a precursor to the T-X from “T3.”
Terminators with a matte-black finish and a red slit for eyes: Shaped like medieval knights, these units are the primary warriors of “The Burning Earth’s” battle scenes. They don’t seem to be an improvement on the T-800s, and indeed, might be a less-advanced model. They can’t effectively climb mountains, but they haplessly pursue the resistance soldiers up the side of Thunder Mountain anyway before falling to their destruction, something John finds morbidly funny.
CONTINUITY
According to the “Terminator” Wiki, “The Burning Earth” is set in 2041, 10 years after the events of the main Now Comics series, although this isn’t explicitly stated in Fortier’s script. The main CPU of Skynet (as in the regular Now series, said to be created by the “Technodyne Corporation”) is now located in Thunder Mountain, Nevada. It’s in Montana in the main series, and the back cover blurb of the 2003 ibooks trade paperback places the stronghold in Colorado.
In the regular series, Skynet keeps some humans alive for its own war-making amusement, but – through self-improvement of its programming – it has resolved to wipe out humanity with nuclear bombs. Seeing that the humans must end the war now, Connor and his soldiers plan to take out Thunder Mountain’s power. They succeed, with a Terminator endoskeleton losing power just as it’s about to kill John. Fortier hedges his bets on whether this is truly the endgame: “But is it really over? I don’t know,” John thinks. In the final panel, an endoskeleton’s eyes glow red, perhaps because its internal power source kicked in. (From the regular series, we know Tim Reese is alive in 2067, and the Earth appears war-torn during that time.)
TIME TRAVEL
There is no time travel in this series.