The Terminator #7 carries the title “The Engine”, which turns out to have a dual meaning. It refers to the unrelenting engine of death that Skynet has become in the future, dispatching Terminators to end threats to its potential reign. But it also refers to history itself – the tyrants and mass murderers whose names and deeds echo throughout time, serving as both warning to future generations and a reminder of the evils humanity can be capable of.
Those two threads intertwine in the main story of “The Engine”, which sees a Terminator dispatched to a concentration camp in Poland in 1944. Its target is one of the prisoners. But what it doesn’t expect is to encounter resistance from the prison guards, who immediately clock that the stranger among them is more than he seems. The entire setup of this issue is chilling, both in the way that Declan Shalvey approaches the story and how David O’Sullivan illustrates the entire issue.
For starters, the setting of “The Engine” is depicted as appropriately bleak. True, there’s the killer robot wrapped in human flesh to consider, but prior to that the guards are hunting down a pair of escaped prisoners…and coldly gun them down in cold blood. And even though the Terminator’s target escapes, there’s still the matter of a camp full of innocent people. O’Sullivan’s artwork only adds to this; entire swaths of the page are blanketed in white, with the camp standing out as a stark gray horror in an otherwise pristine environment.
Dynamite Entertainment
In contrast to past issues, the action is mostly concentrated toward the back half of the issue. But it’s still startling and bloody: bones get crushed, bullets pierce flesh, a head literally gets spun all the way around with a sickening crack. But the most disturbing image O’Sullivan draws is when the Terminator walks through a mountain of barbed wire, which pulls at its false flesh to reveal the cold, unfeeling machine within. Colin Cracker’s colors only serve to highlight this horror – beneath the pale human flesh and the bright red blood, the cold steel and glaring crimson visage of a Terminator can be seen.
If the imagery in The Terminator #7 isn’t disturbing enough, Shalvey’s script matches it with proclamations that are profound, yet haunting. “What is the greatest evil?” the captions ask. “The intent? Or the engine that powers it?” It’s a question that stuck with me long after I closed the book, and a statement that feels very on point with the Terminator franchise – not to mention history in general. Men have committed horrible acts in the name of what they feel is right, but even more dangerous is the world that empowers them to carry those acts out.
The Terminator #7 is the most haunting installment of the series yet, as it takes a searing look at how the gears of warfare are greased throughout history. You know you’ve written a good comic when the killer robot isn’t the only memorable thing in it.
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