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"Big, Bad Wolf"
Terminator #7
NOW Comics
Written by Jack Herman
Penciled by Robin Ator
Inked by Jim Brozman
Cover by Norm Breyfogle
April 1989 |
Skynet turns man's best friend into a mortal enemy.
Story Summary
A couple of good old boys, Sam and Salvadore, the Clemente
brothers, sit on a rooftop, picking off Terminators with
machine guns. But they are suddenly attacked by a Terminator
wolf. Salvadore is killed by the beast and Sam flees in
terror. Meanwhile, the local resistance cell is holed up in
a field hospital, to which their food-foraging team has failed
to return. Resistance members Marissa and Rip are sent to
trade an old Ford for food from the Clementes.
Searching for the Clementes, Marissa, Rip, and Rip's dog,
Trigger, run into a Terminator pretending to be a man in
need of medical attention and asking to be taken to the
field hospital. They recognize the Terminator for what it is
and try to shoot it down, to no avail. They flee into the
subway system, where they lose the Terminator and find Sam
Clemente and the food hoard. But Sam has lost his mind from
what he saw of the Terminator wolf and the death of his
brother, and he thinks Marissa and Rip and the dog are trying
to steal his food. Growing angrier, he injures Marissa and
shoots Trigger, before Rip manages to get the drop on him
and shoots him dead. But, with the Clementes dead, the food
is up for grabs, too much to carry. They head back to the
field hospital.
Meanwhile, the three men of the cell's food-foraging team,
having wrecked their Jeep, are attempting to make it back
through the city with a seriously injured member, when they
encounter the same Terminator who is impersonating a man in
need of medical care. They too, recognize him as a
Terminator and begin firing at him. The Terminator kills one
of them before it is destroyed itself. But then the
Terminator wolf shows up and kills the remaining two men.
On the way back to the field hospital, Marissa and Rip meet
up with the wolf, but it pretends to be friendly and in need
of food so that it will be taken to the base. They arrive at
the hospital and when Rip tries to put the beast in the
kennel with the other dogs, they all start barking and
howling. Rip figures it's because it's a new dog and needs
to get its scent around, so he lets it roam around for a
while. This, of course, is not a good idea, and the wolf
attacks several resistance members in the vehicle repair
garage. During the melee, gasoline is spilled and a plasma
rifle fired by one of the men sets off an enormous fire.
Between the fire and the wolf, virtually the entire cell is
killed, only Marissa and Colonel Pinewood escaping. They
grab a truck and race for the Clemente food stash, with
plans to head out of town.
The wolf is left behind to continue its hunt for humans.
THE END
Didja Know?
The city this story takes place in is not revealed, but
according to the
Terminator Wiki, the city is
Duluth,
Minnesota. However, the story depicts a subway system in
the city, which Duluth does not have.
Characters appearing or mentioned in this issue
Sam Clemente (dies in this issue)
Salvadore Clemente (dies in this issue)
Doc (dies in this issue)
Colonel Pinewood
Marissa Powell
Rip (dies in this issue)
Trigger (dies in this issue)
Skynet
Berryman (dies in this issue)
Didja Notice?
On page 1, panel 1, a symbolic representation of a
Terminator skull is seen on the face of the Moon in the
background as it rises over the city.
On page 1, panel 3, the Clemente brothers have a box of Krax
and a bottle of Olde Harper at their feet as they sit sniping
at Terminators. These were both probably intended as fictitious
brands at the time, but there is a brand of crunchy snacks
called Krax in Europe.
After blowing the head off a Terminator, saving the life of
a dog the robot appeared to be about to kill, one the brothers
says, "Don't worry, Timmy! Lassie's gonna be oh-kay!" This
is a reference to the long-running
Lassie TV series (1954-1974) in which the eponymous
female collie and her boy owner, Timmy got into
various scrapes. In 2031, it
doesn't seem like the Clemente brothers would be old enough
to have watched Lassie reruns on television before
Judgment Day, but maybe they managed to dig up some old
tapes or DVDs for entertainment viewing!
This issue introduces a Terminator wolf model. It is able to
grow its teeth out to six inches long in attack mode!
"Revolution" Part 2 features a more advanced canine
Terminator, the Dire Wolf.
The vehicle the resistance members are working on in panel 1
of page 5 looks like it is probably a military-type Jeep,
though only the front end is seen here. It appears to have
"Nator Killer" painted on the side. This may be the same
Jeep being seen worked on on page 20.
On page 5, one of the Duluth resistance members remarks they
are down to the last of the civil defense rations. These are
storable, long shelf-life food packages stored in boxes in
public fallout shelters and other such civil defense
bunkers. Some such boxes are seen on page 17 in Sam's
hideout, with the triple-triangle fallout shelter symbol on
them.
On page 6, Colonel Pinewood tells Marissa that their first
food-gathering team is AWOL.
AWOL is military shorthand for "Away Without Leave".
On page 6, Pinewood tells Marissa to see if the Clemente
Brothers will trade some of their food hoard for a Ford.
Ford, of
course, is a manufacturer of automobiles.
Apparently Duluth was hit with a neutron bomb on Judgment
Day, because Rip remarks that, for having been hit by such a
bomb, "...the place doesn't look so bad," and, on pages 8
and 18, graffiti painted on walls and debris in the city
reads "NEUTRONS SUK".
On page 7, Marissa and Rip enter Frank's Butcher Shop. This
appears to be a fictitious business in Duluth.
The word balloon placement in panel 2 of page 12 is messed
up and seems to confuse whether the person pictured in it is
Rip or Sam.
Sam had lost his cap on page 4, but seems to have found
another one by page 12. The current cap is the same color,
but now has a CAT patch on front. CAT is a shorthand logo
used by
Caterpillar, Inc., a leading manufacturer of tractors,
bulldozers, and diesel engines.
On page 14, a resistance member refers to the Terminator
that is pretending to be a sick man as Frankenstein.
This, of course, is a reference to
Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein (and
subsequent film adaptations) about Dr. Frankenstein, who
brings to life an artificial man from the stitched-together
body parts of human corpses.
On page 19, Rip gives the Terminator wolf some food, not
knowing what it really is. He says, "My, what big eyes you
have." This is a line from the classic European fairy tale of
"Little Red Riding Hood", spoken by a young girl when she brings some food
to her grandmother's house, to find that she is being
impersonated by a Big Bad Wolf.
On page 20, Marissa tells Rip she has a date with the
Sandman. The Sandman is a mythical character of European
folklore who brings sleep and good dreams to people by
sprinkling tiny particles of magic sand in their eyes.
Rip tries to place the wolf in the kennel with the other
dogs, but the dogs go crazy, barking and howling as he
approaches with the wolf. This scene may have been inspired
by a scene from the classic 1982 horror film
The Thing, in which a dog from a neighboring camp
(which is actually one of the Things) is placed in the kennel of
Outpost 31 and the other dogs start to go crazy when the
strange dog begins to transform.
On page 21, panel 3, a box with the international radiation
logo is seen on it.
On page 25, panel 2, a poster featuring a human skull and
the atomic energy symbol is seen in the background.
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