The Terminator: 2029-1984

The Terminator graphic novels

by Zack Whedon, Andy MacDonald (Artist), Dan Jackson (Artist)

Rising stars Zack Whedon and Andy MacDonald deliver explosive action and poignant humanity in both the future and the past in this inspired reimagining of The Terminator! Before John Connor sent him back in time to save Sarah Connor from the infamous T-800, Kyle Reese was just another man fighting to survive in a world overrun by Skynet and its terrifying army of killer cyborgs. Follow Kyle on his journey through the ravaged landscape of 2029, to a world previously unimaginable to him - the glittering streets of Los Angeles in 1984! Along the way, a shocking discovery at a hidden Cyberdyne facility sheds new light on Kyle's fate in the past. The future of humanity seems more uncertain than ever as Kyle battles an entirely new Terminator threat alongside Sarah Connor.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Comics, Science Fiction, Time Travel, Comic Book, Graphic Novels Comics, Post Apocalyptic

168 pages, Paperback

First published June 22, 2011

About the author

Zack Whedon (born August 14, 1979) is an American screenwriter ('Deadwood', 'Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog' and 'Fringe') and Comic Book writer ('Dr. Horrible and Other Horrible Stories', 'Terminator: 2029 to 1984' and Firefly/serenity's 'The Shepherd's Tale').

He graduated in 2002 with a film degree from Wesleyan University where he served as president of the Eclectic Society. Zack is from a family of writers: he is the son of screenwriter Tom Whedon, grandson of screenwriter John Whedon, and the brother of screenwriter/musician Jed Whedon and producer/director/writer Joss Whedon.

His first professional work in television was as a production assistant on his brother Joss Whedon's series, 'Angel'.

He is best known for his work, alongside his brothers Joss Whedon and Jed Whedon, on the parody musical 'Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog' which he co-created and co-wrote.

Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zack_Whedon.

Reviews

[Little Timmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice art and plot make this a enjoyable read in the Ongoing Terminator storyline. Recommended

[Aidan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing! The art work blends together in a beautiful combination not seen since Barry Windsor-Smith's "Weapon X". There's a lot of books like this ( set after or before the movie) that are extremely disappointing that ruin everything. This is not the case. It's beautiful yet hard. Zack Whedon and Andy McDonald understand that "Terminator" is about more than naughty robots with shotguns. In world where the plot is literally devoid of humanity, the manage to latch on to what's left through Kyle, Sarah, and the original characters Ben and Paige. Truly amazing. It's exactly what "Terminator Salvation" tried to be. except mot such an epic fail ;)

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the focus on the characters and their situation living within the post-Judgment Day world and/or living with the certainty that it was still to come.

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Kudos to the creative team for keeping the actual Terminator's appearances to a minimum, he works far better as an object of menace when not seen and giving him dialogue without AHNie to deliver it would have been a waste of time.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun read which fleshes out some of the characters from the first Terminator movie, and provides a look into the dystopian future that the characters jump back from.

When I saw the title, I was a little confused, but then I remembered what franchise I was about to read, so it clicked.

I liked the characters and the alternative timeline shenanigans the characters get up to. The action is well drawn and the characters act like fleshed out versions of the characters from the first movie.

If you're a terminator fan and want to read an (alternative story? The Terminator timeline is confusing) fill in comic, give this a read.

[Anchorpete · Rating 3 out of 5]

A terminator Elseworlds story?

A Terminator Elseworlds story that is better than any terminator property that has come out since Terminator 2?

Yup

Ok... can I go into Spoilers?

Was this supposed to be a one off story? Am I the only one that believed that this story could take place within the cannon of the first two films, with the exception of one detail? Do you know what the detail is that I am talking about? It's that guy who was in T2, that Sarah Connor meets up with in Mexico, after her and the T-180 and John go on the run.

In this book, he gets killed off, during the time before T2 takes place. besides that little detail, this book could fit perfectly between the first two movies. I really love the ambition of this story, and the focus on character, and the fact that Sarah and John Connor aren't the main characters that are being focused on. I want to follow this time line, than whatever came out of terminator Genesys

[47Time · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a movie-quality script. It bridges gaps, expands the story and just plain makes sense. It proves that the Terminator universe has a lot of potential in the right hands. Sure, robot killers from the future might sound like a childish theme, but add to that some human emotion, a militaristic resistance with actual tactics in mind, and you have yourself some quality entertainment.

Kyle Reese is the leader of a group of survivors. His camp is over 4000 strong, but never out of Skynet's sight. The most recent attack is made with a new terminator model, one that looks human (if you consider Arnie human). The camp is forced to relocate. Ben and Paige are lovers, kind of. Amid the chaos they struggle to stay together.

During a mission, an elderly Kyle Reese is found. He is the one who traveled back to 1984 to keep Sarah Connor safe. He survived in captivity. His captor was involved with Skynet, so taking him out might prevent its creation. Old Kyle can't change young Kyle's mission, lest Sarah be killed. He asks his friend Ben to handle his captor. After losing Paige to a T-800, Ben agrees to the mission.

Ben follows Kyle to 1984, but doesn't interfere while Sarah and Kyle struggle to defeat the first terminator. Sarah sees Kyle's body being taken away. Ben contacts her to reveal that Kyle may still be alive, but he can't be sure unless they work together. Sarah doesn't need a lot of convincing to join Ben.

With Kyle freed, Sarah, Ben and Kyle consider themselves the first resistence. They get ready for the terminator who never stops looking for them. He finally finds them right when Sarah goes into labor. Kyle takes a fatal wound, but disables the terminator in the end. With his final breath he asks Sarah to stay hidden and protect John above all else.

Ben makes sure that Paige's mother is well and visits Sarah and John from time to time. The scientists behind Skynet continue their research, unaware of the future, but right now it looks like at least there will be a future for humanity thanks to people like John Connor.

[Gonzalo Oyanedel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Una historia dividida en dos miniseries que aprovecha los vacíos argumentales entre la primera y segunda película, con un mayor perfil para Kyle Reese. Producto sin mucho riesgo que aprovecha las ideas centrales de la franquicia con el objetivo de entretener con aventura bien armada.

[Erik · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't really see the point of the retcon here. It's too rushed to provide anything of significance to the story and just serves to take away the emotional weight of some of the bigger moments of Terminator 1 and 2. The first half was an enjoyable look at Reese in the future though.

[Z · Rating 2 out of 5]

A quick read. Not much substance nor importance.

[Elwyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the characters.

I hated how I was constantly questioning things.

I was wondering if this story was meant to be a retcon or not because we know John Connor blows up the time machine to prevent further people coming through... but it must have been after the 2nd T-800 came through. So how did Ben get to 1984?

How do the T-800s know that John and Kyle were in the area with Ben and Paige? Why do they kill only Paige but not Ben?

What was the point of Ben and Paige encountering a rebel faction of the Resistance?

Is this all setup for a sequel?

[Scott Schmidt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ultimately felt like the writer tried to shoehorn a new chapter into the Terminator mythos that doesn't change anything enough to warrant the effort. None of the 2029 content felt necessary and squandered the space to delve into the parts that did show promise in enriching the core story. I did really appreciate one aspect of it, though and although it's obvious in retrospect, it never occurred to me that John Connor is mankind's savior only because Kyle Reese was a great soldier. It's worth the read if you're a Terminator super fan.

[Steven Shinder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Huge jump in quality from the '90s stuff. While this storyline came out not long after Terminator: Salvation, it doesn't feel tied to the story or aesthetics of that film. It's kind of an alternate scenario. What makes it work is how it follows this character in the future war named Ben, who also falls in love with Paige. He knows John Connor and Kyle Reese, and later learns that in 1984 Kyle was actually captured at the end of the first film. So we get to see a different dynamic from what we're used to. In a franchise with time travel, any of these stories can be possible somewhere.

[Indika de Silva · Rating 5 out of 5]

At first I was very confused about the title. Then when I started to I realized it is about Kyle Reese. Then the story got very interesting. There are several plot-holes which usually happens with time travelling stories but overall it is a very enjoyable read and the art work is very lovely.

A must read for fans of the Terminator franchise.

[Sloe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Perfectly competently executed story, but one that nobody asked for and that cheapens the original story by retconning a major character death, only to end with a cop-out, killing him and preserving the status quo. The dialogue and visual storytelling are there, just a shame they're wasted on such a plot

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun twist on the Terminator mythos, with interesting new characters and a fast-paced story.

[MyKey Rusz · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

[Hector Vela · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best sequel of Terminator 1

[Donavon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This can only exist in a timeline that ignores the other sequels. Interesting, but ultimately nothing that memorable.

[Molly Hart · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this. It was nice that Sarah and Kyle were finally able to spend time together.

[Hadrian · Rating 3 out of 5]

6,5/10

[Sam Nicholson · Rating 4 out of 5]

8/10

[monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

kyle and sarah getting 5 months together before he died instead of one night omg 😭😭😭😭

[Don Weiss · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kyle Reese, Sergeant Tech-Com, DN38416, was a soldier from a post-apocalyptic future in which machines drove humanity to the brink of extinction after decades of war. In a last-ditch effort to ensure mankind’s survival, he was sent back in time to protect Sarah Connor, the mother-to-be of the leader of the human Resistance, from the Terminator, a relentless cyborg assassin with a mission to extinguish humanity’s final hope. After a series of running battles, Reese was killed in one final attempt to destroy the Terminator.

Or was he?

Before Terminator 2: Judgment Day catapulted the series to a science fiction, action-loaded blockbuster, the original Terminator film was a more low-key combination of sci-fi, film noir, and tragic romance. Terminator 2029—1984 follows in that tradition, focusing more on the character of Kyle Reese (so memorably played by Michael Biehn on the big screen) in the future and revisiting key events from the first movie in 1984 Los Angeles, taking another direction by postulating that Reese survived his final battle with the Terminator and spent decades imprisoned and interrogated, first by shady government black ops types, later by Skynet and its army of cyborgs, all of whom want to exploit his knowledge of the future for their own purposes. In some respects, it attempts to do what Terminator: Genisys attempted, years before Terminator: Genisys was conceived. A new character, Ben Oliver, is introduced with his own bittersweet love story, and his involvement allows a fresh prospective of The Terminator to be viewed, for better or worse.

The ideas visited are fun, even provocative, but ultimately futile once the end of the story is reached. In spite of Ben’s intervention in the timeline, Reese still dies by the end of the story (again, at the hands of a Terminator), although this death is far more poignant in that it’s now a moment shared with Sarah and the newborn John Connor. While some things change, some things stay the same. There’s some great foreshadowing of past/future events, with Sarah Connor herself kicking off the concept of the Resistance, and the concept of reprogramming a T-800 to fight on the side of humanity is alluded to, paving the way for the plot of Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The real tragedy, however, is that time travel has been used to such extremes in the entire Terminator series that no one can really say for certain what sticks and what doesn’t. Between the movies, the Sarah Connor Chronicles TV series, and other graphic novels, Kyle Reese has almost a half-dozen different outcomes to his mission, ranging from a full life to live with Sarah to only their few hours together, to at least two different deaths.

A brisk one-day read, Terminator 2029—1984 is a well-crafted take on the original movie and its human against machine dynamic, but will inevitably fall by the wayside along with other short-lived Terminator tie-ins and spin-offs, living forever in the shadow of James Cameron’s theatrical masterpiece and its blockbuster sequel.

[Trekscribbler · Rating 3 out of 5]

THE TERMINATOR: 2029-1984

So far as I’m concerned, THE TERMINATOR has always been a great franchise that has suffered from lackluster treatment in the comic books. Now, I’m not picking on Dark Horse here; they’ve given the property a good look, and they’ve built upon the ideas of that universe in some unique and interesting ways. It’s just that once I’ve finished reading anything that’s come out I think it’s been fairly quickly forgotten. It’s never had the staying power – at least, not in my memory – the way some of the tales Dark Horse has spawned from some other sci-fi worlds.

Still, THE TERMINATOR: 2029-1984 quickly became an exception to that rule. The script is written by Zack Whedon, and the art is supplied by Andy Macdonald. Unlike some of those other yarns, this one has a welcome feeling – a sense of ‘home’ – that many minis sorely missed.

Basically, the story posits that not long after John Connor sent Kyle Reese back in time for the purposes of protecting his mother, Sarah, from the T-800 another man shows up also requiring a trip back … in order to protect Kyle Reese! It would seem that, somehow, events in the present timeline have changed, and a much aged Reese tells his younger comrade that things need to be corrected. So much like the second BACK TO THE FUTURE movie does, audiences do get to revisit some of the events of the first picture from a markedly different perspective.

The upside? It’s a quick and harmless read that basically requires that reader only have familiarity with the first movie (from 1984). The art is nice with colors occasionally a bit brighter than what we’ve normally seen in Terminator miniseries, but, stylistically, it all melds together quite well.

The downside?

Well, the narrative basically sets up a situation wherein these characters are required to re-experience themes that – quite frankly – they already went through in that first seminal film. Hey, I’m all for playing out the various outcomes of ‘what if’ as much as the next fan (I do love this franchise quite a bit); it’s just that so many of the moments celebrated here feel a bit derivative emotionally of things that have already happened. Give the high praise for this tale, I thought it was going to offer up something fresh; instead, we’ve ignored canon (I thought the time displacement equipment was destroyed after Kyle Reese followed the original T-800 back, no?) and the only pay-off are already established themes, feelings, and nuances.

But – and I mean this wholeheartedly – 2029-1984 is definitely worth the time spent with it. As I said, it’s quick. It’s convenient. It feels like slipping into those old gym shoes that felt so comfy when you last wore them, and here they are twenty years later still feeling as welcoming. Trust me when I say this could’ve been a train wreck, but instead it’s a welcome journey back to a property we all enjoy.

RECOMMENDED.

[Zoë Birss · Rating 3 out of 5]

So many stories have been written for the Terminator franchise, including novels following each movie that become soundly retconned at the release of each subsequent film, not to mention the convoluted mess that are the films themselves, that it must be quite a project to tell a story that makes any sense within the world, and has never yet been told.

Besides the difficulty of writing for such a sprawling and complicated universe, the added challenge of writing characters with free choice and a story with consequences in a timeline that may be predetermined only makes the assignment of writing a new story for his world one that I do not envy.

Considering all that, I was impressed with how well this story pulled off this feat of creativity. This story takes place between the events of the first two Terminator films. It manages to be a better story than any of the three films that have been released since. This would have made a far better film than Genysis. Unfortunately, it is a simpler story than Genysis was, and Hollywood is not known for its restraint.

I did feel the story was rushed in the last three chapters. I think it could have been lengthened to eight or even ten issues instead of six. Alternatively, the story could have been improved by keeping the time passing in the plot steady. Instead, Whedon skips ahead by weeks and months a few times in the last few chapters. The story still works. But it is jarring and creates an atmosphere in the storytelling that is not of the same tone as the first half.

I've read quite a few comics and novelizations in this universe. This story is among the best of anything I've read. It's no masterpiece. But in this somewhat mangled and bastardized franchise, anything even close to thoughtful and faithful to the original stories is a welcome relief.

[Bradley · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Terminator interpretation that had great potential but ultimately falls short. The artwork is excellent and many of the story points you can see would work quite well in the context of the Terminator universe. However, instead of going its own way it tries to be cute and fit inside the films (The Terminator and T2) proper which leads to plotholes and contradictions. For one thing its pretty well established in the 2nd film that Skynet only sent two terminators between 1984 and 1995 and that Kyle Reese only spent one night with Sarah Connor, for another the dialogue Reese has in the 1984 police station doesn't fit what actually happens in the comic backstory based in 2029. It would have been forgiven somewhat if it branched off from the movies and created its own timeline but then still tries to fit within the Terminator 2 film by the characters blowing up the first terminator then later showing the only suriving parts of the first terminator hand and CPU. That's not even going into the new character Ben and his insertion into the terminator universe. That all said, it is still one of the better comics based one the Terminator films and its good to see that Dark Horse have finally stopped that stupid Terminator talk they used to do years ago ('Target sighted'. 'Terminate'. Etc). Worth a look.

[M · Rating 3 out of 5]

Zack Whedon channels that famous family writing talent in this look at the Terminator saga through the eyes of new character Ben. Friend of famous time-traaveller Kyle Reese - who was sent back in time to help protect Sarah Connor - Ben is trying to keep himself alive in the hellish future. His attempts to win over fellow refugee Paige are often rebuked, until a hasty retreat from a full-on Skynet assault sends the human survivors on the run. Rescuing Paige from a T-800 brings the pair together; a repeat assault separates the two just as quickly. In order to try and save Paige, Ben heeds the ramblings of a rescued old man claiming to be Kyle Reese and gets shunted back in time. Following the younger Kyle back to 1984, Ben attempts to alter his own future and finds himself assisting a pregnant Sarah against the Terminator. The great effect of this story is that instead of altering or convoluting the movie mythos, it enhances the storyline. Whedon creates a very human Ben as the lynchpin of his story, reminding readers of the best and worst in humanity.

[Dann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zack Whedon and Andy MacDonald deliver a fascinating companion piece to the original Terminator film with The Terminator: 2029-1984. In 2029 the Resistance frees a Skynet prisoner who claims to be Kyle Reese, and that he has been held captive since being sent back to 1984 where he fought a T-800 that was sent to kill Sarah Connor. He then convinces his former best friend Ben to follow his present-self back to the past and rescue him after he saves Sarah and is captured. The characters are especially well-written and the plot does a good job at working within the film continuity. Also, the artwork is quite captivating; with impressive designs and extraordinary color texture. The Terminator: 2029-1984 expands on James Cameron’s original story and takes it in a new and interesting direction.

[Lynn DiFerdinando · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading the reviews, a lot of people seem offended that this doesn't fit into canon of t2 and beyond. I don't mind, frankly. The original movie has always been my favorite, with t2 kind of taking the shine off the hopeful-ish ending. I like how this one is also open-ended. The story is Sarah's story, after all. John conner's story should be left to the imagination. Not to mention, the imagination can create horrors and war better than any comic or movie. The apocalyptic future is far more horrifying if we only know it as a nightmare. The extra uncertainty that this comic added makes it even scarier, but also more hopeful. The unchangable-causality-loop theory takes that away and makes everything far too static and hopeless for my mind. This a good addition to the canon of the first movie.

[Ben Guilfoy · Rating 3 out of 5]

So much potential... starts off really well, but gets less interesting as things go on. The idea that Kyle Reese actually survived the first movie and lives through the machine war as an old man is a fascinating concept but the second half of the story just doesn't really go anywhere. Instead, after an interesting first half, the "1984" section of the story just becomes another tired retread of familiar "Terminator" plots. I enjoyed the artwork and the new characters, but the "Terminator" franchise is rife with possibility that literally NO ONE seems to ever truly capitalize on — and that includes the writers of the last three movies.