As I’ve reviewed the comics ever so slightly out of order, I thought it was time to go back to the very first Terminator series from Dark Horse, which kicked off the expanded universe of Terminator stories beyond the films.

What’s interesting is that these comics were written and published before and during the production of Terminator 2; as such, they offer a fascinating glimpse at what creators imagined beyond just the first Terminator, prior to the sequel opening up the possibilities quite a bit.

For example, just the darker, more violent and horror-adjacent tone of the first film, which differs drastically from the more action-oriented style of the second film, is what we see in these earlier adaptations, and that’s definitely the case in Tempest.

The story of Tempest sees a group of soldiers heading back to 1984 using Skynet’s Time Displacement Chamber, with their mission being to eliminate key personnel from Cyberdyne. Despite leaving a soldier behind to disrupt the facility that the Time Displacement Chamber is held in, a group of Terminators are awoken from their Incubation Chambers and follow them back to the past, with a plasma pistol hidden inside the body of a human soldier, so it survives the time travel process. Armed with this futuristic technology, the Terminators embark on a mission to kill the Resistance soldiers before they can disrupt the plans of Cyberdyne to bring Skynet to life.

Though it’s got a reasonable enough premise and some inventively gory action (the weapon inside a living body being a great example of this), Tempest fails to do anything particularly interesting with its story. It’s all very by the numbers, and ends with a sting in the tail that would go on to be repeated numerous times in subsequent series, with little, if anything, disrupted or resolved by the story’s climax.

Of course, the writers were hamstrung by a lack of material, as well as knowing that a sequel was on the way, so they had little choice but to play it safe; back when this was published, however, I can tell you that it was hugely exciting to read more Terminator material, beyond the single film that existed, and which made such a huge impact on me as a kid.

The art, though dated in terms of its colouring style, is actually pretty good, but the content does try a little too hard to be edgy at times; it’s almost laughable now, but this really did feel like proper, adult comic book stuff back then.

Still, it’s decent enough, and it proved that Dark Horse Comics were a safe pair of hands for plenty of more mature, licensed comics. Though they had much greater success with the often excellent Aliens and Predator comics they published, even the latter had a really shaky start before it shook off the shackles of its source material and went to more interesting places; the same could be said of the Terminator, and Tempest itself.