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"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.
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