Terminator Omnibus Volume 2

The Terminator Omnibus #2

by Chris Warner

The Terminators never sleep. They don't need food or water. The heat of the desert gives them no pause. The darkness of night does not halt their deadly gaze. Bullets won't stop them. Their humanity cannot be appealed to-because they have none. Sent from the future, their mission is clear and unrelenting: to erase the lives of any who threaten their future dominance, any who would attempt to deny the rise of the Machine. But that which man has created, man can destroy, and so . . . the war for the future begins today.

Dark Horse Comics is the acknowledged leader of adapting film blockbusters to graphic fiction, and The Terminator is one of the premier examples of what can be done with comics to expand an exciting film mythos.

* Featuring work by fan-favorite creators James Robinson, Jackson Guice, Alan Grant, Steve Pugh, Guy Davis and more.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Science Fiction, Adventure, Action, Cyberpunk, Film

376 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 9, 2008

About the author

Librarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name

Chris Warner (born 1955) is an American comic book writer, artist, and editor for Dark Horse Comics.
(source: Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Quentin Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this volume slightly more than the first volume. We start off with the last of the "original" Dark Horse Terminator tales from the early 1990s, which finished with "Endgame." I read these back when they came out. However, apparently Dark Horse put out more Terminator Comics in the late 1990s, around 98-99, that I was unaware even existed. I enjoyed these more than the previous stories.

You get all the action you'd expect from The Terminator, the art is good and the stories never let up, moving at a break-neck pace. If you are a Terminator fan, you should pick up this volume. In all honesty, some of the stories are better than the later movies.

[Stephen Theaker · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Hunters and Killers", the eighty-page story that opens this volume, was interesting for me in being the first Terminator story I've seen or read which didn't feature any time-travelling. It made for a refreshing change, as was seeing what was going on during the war with Skynet somewhere other than the US.

"Endgame" takes us back to some of the characters who survived the stories in the first omnibus, as the Terminators try to prevent John Connor's birth. It's a good story, but it's easy to see why the comic came to a close at this point (licensing issues aside): there's a limit to how many Terminators you can send back after Sarah Connor before their failure becomes ludicrous.

Dark Horse then lost the license for a few years, before returning with "Death Valley" (originally a mini-series just called The Terminator). It's an okay story that wouldn't be out of place in the current tv series. Guy Davis's artwork in the first half is good, but Steve Pugh's artwork in the second half is a huge departure, and is very hit and miss. John Connor looks rather "slow of thinking" in many panels; far from the sharp-eyed, quick-witted scamp you'd expect. ("Suicide Run", a short story which appeared in Dark Horse Presents at about the same time, is also included.)

But if John Connor looks weird in that story, wait till you get a look at "The Dark Years". At the beginning of that story (split between the turn of the century and the Skynet war of the future), the adult John Connor looks like a stern yoga instructor, but by the end has transformed into a post-potion Obelix. Amazingly, there's no change of penciller, so the inkers must have really gone for it on this one. The last panel has to be seen to be believed.

[Angelo · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s pretty decent stuff. The Col Mary Randall 80’s era is much better than the late 90’s series.

[Erik · Rating 1 out of 5]

Mediocre stories with bad art that don't work very well with the movies.

[Sam Nicholson · Rating 3 out of 5]

6/10

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

The art is the typical heavy and unnuanced style of the period, but the stories are superior to every filmed sequel after T2.

[Dann · Rating 2 out of 5]

A collection of 4 Dark Horse graphic novels (plus a bonus one-shot comic) The Terminator: Omnibus – Volume 2 tells the continuing stories of humanity’s struggle against the computer network Skynet and its army of Terminators. The most interesting of the books is Hunters and Killers, in which Skynet has a Soviet counterpart called MIR, and their uneasy alliance is jeopardized when the human resistance in Siberia attempts to launch a secret cache of nuclear missile that will wipeout MIR. There’s also an attempt to resurrect the 1990 comic series in Endgame, where Mary Randall must reunion her team in order to protect Sarah Connor as she gives birth. And the final two books, Death Valley and The Dark Years, follows John Norden who loses his family as a child when Terminators mistake him for John Connor, and later he joins the human resistance and must grudgingly find a way to work with Connor. Unfortunately, most of these stories are lackluster and contain a lot of extraneous material. Additionally, the artwork is pretty poor and varies from dark and grungy to bright and cartoonish. There are a few highlights, but overall The Terminator: Omnibus – Volume 2 is a rather weak set of comic series.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

My 3 star rating doesn't reflect the amount of enjoyment I received from this collection. I am a huge fan of the terminators franchise. I have seen all the movies (T2 is my favorite movie of all time), read some if the novels, and played the video games. This is my first time reading a Terminator comic. I am always worried that comics based on movies are cheap productions with nothing to add to story what it is based. The last two stories in this collection fall into this description. The art is sloppy and the story made lazy pointless changes to the franchise. On the other hand, the first 3 stories were awesome. They sought to tell emotional and thrilling science fiction which is exactly what the Terminator franchise is all about. Since the review is based on the book as a whole I averaged the rating to 3 stars. Also it would have been nice to add extra content such as an art gallery or interviews with the writers because many collected editions offer do that.

[ltcomdata · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another set of terminator stories. In these ones, the timelines are much more fluid, much less consistent. The effect is to make the Terminator Universe pretty convoluted and chaotic. For the most part, each story can be read on its own, with little expectation that anything within it will affect the events in the other stories. NOT my kind of universe. I prefer consistency.

What is nice about these stories is that about half of them take place in the future. Thus, we get to see the actual battle for survival the humans are waging against the machines, as well as the counter attacks the machines device against humanity.

[Mhorg · Rating 2 out of 5]

While Dark Horse went on to do some great Star Wars Stories, the Terminator started out good and went down hill from there. Some of the stories ignore established continuity (I don't believe there were more than one time displacement unit), others are either poorly drawn or written. The first arc is the best. DH's Predator series was better.

[Little Timmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

If all you have ever know about the Terminator storyline is the movies then read this. There is so much more to discover about the war with the machines. Fantastic storyline and characters. Highly recommended

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

They started making these comics before Terminator 2 came out, so they stories serve as a sort of alternate timeline.