For the Adherent of Pop Culture
Adventures of Jack Burton ] Back to the Future ] Battlestar Galactica ] Buckaroo Banzai ] Cliffhangers! ] Earth 2 ] The Expendables ] Firefly/Serenity ] The Fly ] Galaxy Quest ] Indiana Jones ] Jurassic Park ] Land of the Lost ] Lost in Space ] The Matrix ] The Mummy/The Scorpion King ] The Prisoner ] Sapphire & Steel ] Snake Plissken Chronicles ] Star Trek ] Terminator ] The Thing ] Total Recall ] Tron ] Twin Peaks ] UFO ] V the series ] Valley of the Dinosaurs ] Waterworld ] PopApostle Home ] Links ] Privacy ]

Episode Studies by Clayton Barr

enik1138
at popapostle-dot-com
Terminator: Cocoa Beach (Part 1) "Cocoa Beach" Part 1
Terminator #9
NOW Comics
Writer: Ron Fortier
Penciler: Thomas Tenney
Inker: Jim Brozman
Cover by Norm Breyfogle
June 1989

 

The scattered members of Sarah's Slammers attempt to find safety after the disaster at Third Base.

 

Story Summary

 

A small group of survivors of Sarah's Slammers trek through the Everglades after their escape from Third Base. Shortly, they find DIX-190's airboat, where Deffard is tied up. They free him and begin working on rewiring the Terminator's HK so they can pilot it themselves.

 

Meanwhile, Konrad and Tim uncover an old rowboat and make their way upriver and DIX-190 emerges from the rubble of Third Base, making contact with Skynet and being told to await pick-up.

 

Gow gets the HK rewired and K.C. pilots it towards Cocoa Beach, where Deffard said he knew Skynet was engaging in some kind of project.

 

That night, Konrad and Tim meet an old woman living in a shack in the Everglades. She feeds Tim rabbit stew and tells Konrad she can get him fixed up at a human repair facility the next day.

 

The Slammers arrive in Cocoa Beach in their HK just in time to rescue the local resistance cell, the Horse Soldiers, from an attack by Skynet HKs. The leader of the Soldiers, Major Iron-Horse Adams tells them that Skynet has built some kind of war shuttle which is going to launch soon from the old Canaveral space center to strike the secret U.N. base on the Moon.

 

CONTINUED IN TERMINATOR #10

 

Notes from the Terminator chronology

 

This issue takes place almost immediately after the events of "In the Belly of the Beast".

 

Didja Know?

 

This story introduces a resistance group called the Horse Soldiers in Cocoa Beach, Florida. This issue and next do not have title's in them; I have borrowed the title that was applied to these two issues on the Terminator Wiki.

 

 

 

Characters appearing or mentioned in this issue

 

Sarah's Slammers

Konrad

Tim Reese

Chi Gow

Essie Dorian

Doyle

K. C. Berwanger

Rosetti (deceased, mentioned only)

Deffard

Commander Leahy

Sgt. Tom Slager

DIX-190

Roger

Tama

Major Iron-Horse Adams

The Horse Soldiers

Commander Tucker

 

Didja Notice?

 

On page 4, Konrad's robotic vision shows him that there is the mouth of a river ahead, off Lake Okeechobee. Tim tells him it must be the Indian River, which goes up to Orlando. Lake Okeechobee is an actual lake in Florida introduced in "In the Belly of the Beast". The Indian River is also real, but it does not connect to Lake Okeechobee, lying 30 or so miles away as the crow flies, along the east coast of Florida. The river also does not connect to the city of Orlando, which lies about 40 miles inland from the river. There does not appear to be any river directly connecting Lake Okeechobee and Orlando; the Kissimmee River comes the closest, running between Kissimmee and Lake Okeechobee.

 

A burning pick-up truck in the wreckage of the mining compound has SUX-1000 printed on the tailgate. This may be a nod to the 6000 SUX automobile seen in the 1987 film Robocop.

 

On page 8, panel 2, the Skynet orbiting communications satellite has a designation printed on the side, "7-A Technodyne Comm. Sat." In this series of comic books (as well as in the Burning Earth mini-series) the more familiar Cyberdyne Corporation is called Technodyne instead for some reason.

 

Page 10 reveals that Gow's first name is Chi.

 

The spaceship seen flying over the Li'l Houston moonbase in the flashback on page 11 appears similar to the U.S. space shuttle.

 

Page 12 reveals that the initials that K.C. goes by stand for Katherine Casey.

 

On page 17, the old woman living in the swamp shack calls herself Tama and says she is a Seminole woman. The Seminoles are a real world Native American tribe and the story of the Unconquered People is quite fascinating on its own if you get a chance to read about them. The tribe exists as both Oklahoma and Florida Seminoles, they never surrendered to the U.S. government during the Indian Wars, and they counted among their members African-Americans who escaped slavery in the south. The Seminoles do have a reservation in the Lake Okeechobee area, Big Cypress Indian Reservation.

 

Also on page 17, the robotic Konrad states that he is powered by a glycerol-based capillary system that must be freshened on a regular basis. Glycerol is a type of sugar alcohol that is used as fuel in some types of diesel generators.

 

Finding the Horse Soldiers under attack by HKs in Cocoa Beach, Gow says they're getting ready to make like Custer at the Little Bighorn. This is a reference to Custer's Last Stand, also known as the Battle of the Little Bighorn, a battle of the Great Sioux War of 1876, in which Brevet Major General George Custer and his regiment of the U.S. Cavalry were soundly defeated by the allied forces of the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho Indian tribes.

 

On page 26, Tucker is wearing a baseball cap with the "LA" logo of the Los Angeles Dodgers on it.

 

At the end of the issue, Major Adams tells Commander Leahy that Skynet has built some kind of war shuttle, similar to the space shuttle, and it's going to launch from the old Canaveral space center in a few days to strike the secret moonbase. This refers to Cape Canaveral, a NASA space launch facility since 1950.

 

Back to Terminator Episode Studies