Seeing as it’s the 40th anniversary of James Cameron’s iconic sci-fi/horror film, The Terminator, I thought it’d be cool to take a little trip back in time myself and check out some old comic stories based on the franchise.

Though the movies have varied incredibly wildly in quality, with a few real stinkers in the 6 that have been made so far (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and Terminator Genisys being undoubtedly the worst of them all, in my opinion), the best ones (The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day) can lay claim to being among the most iconic and rewatchable films of all time.

So it’s always interesting at the very least to see what other creators do with the material, and in a different medium too. Quite often, it’s just a rehash of similar tropes from the films, but sometimes, as with the Alien and Predator comics, the stories can go in really interesting directions.

The latter is, unfortunately, not the case when it comes to The Terminator: 2029, at least not in this first issue. It is a ‘reimagining’ of Kyle Reese’s story from the original movie, but there’s very little interesting or particularly riveting in this opening issue to justify its existence.

Opening with a look at two human resistance characters on lookout, I think the guy (Ben) is supposed to come across as somewhat innocent and lovestruck, but to contemporary eyes, he just feels like an incel who won’t take no for an answer. And everyone seems to bug poor Paige, the target of his affection, despite her showing zero romantic interest in him, as well as pretty much telling him that too.

So we’re off to a bad start with our main characters straight away, and then we get a swaggering Reese entering the picture, who’s supposedly the head of the human colony they’re protecting, while John Connor is nowhere to be seen. It’s all a little odd.

Though the first encounter of a T-800 that’s successful in infiltrating the colony provides the impetus for the plot to get moving, it doesn’t really go anywhere of note, and it’s not as if the issue ends on a particularly compelling cliffhanger.

Zack Whedon, half brother of current, deserved pariah Joss Whedon, is on scripting duties here and it just feels lazy and uninspired so far. Andy Macdonald’s art isn’t bad, at least, but he rarely gets anything particularly challenging to render (a scene of Skynet’s creations on the offensive sadly felt a bit amateurish, though).

Hopefully this is just the setup for what’s to come, and the rest of the series, and its ‘sequel’ The Terminator: 1984, improves from here.