DIX-190 meets Skynet in person; Tama leads Konrad and Tim to
a baby-making factory run by nuns beneath an amusement park.
DIX-190 arrives at the location of Skynet's CPU at a NORAD
base in Montana. There, Skynet informs him he is an obsolete
model and that he will be reconstructed as the unit 103,
code-name Goliath.
Tama leads Konrad and Tim to the ruins of Mort Dizzy World
in Orlando, where a resistance cell has teamed with a group
of nuns, scientists, and other survivors to raise human
babies in artificial wombs of seaweed through in vitro
fertilization, part of John Connor's plan to repopulate the
world while fighting Skynet.
Dr. Hiram Potterwax
Didja Notice?
The airborne explosion witnessed by Konrad, Tim, and Tama on
page 1 is presumably the mid-air destruction of the war
shuttle Viking by Sarah's Slammers and the Horse
Soldiers, as previously seen in "Cocoa Beach"
Part 2.
DIX-190 arrives at NORAD Command Center in the Rocky
Mountains of northern Montana.
NORAD
is the North American Aerospace Defense Command, a joint
operation of the U.S. and Canada to provide early warning
and defense against air and space offenses against the two
nations. There are no official NORAD command centers
in Montana, however. NORAD headquarters is located at
Peterson Air Force Base, close to Colorado Springs,
Colorado, with a nuclear bunker and alternate command center
at nearby Cheyenne Mountain. This issue states that Skynet's
central processing unit is located at this Montana base; in
most other Terminator stories, it is located at the
Cheyenne Mountain complex.
As far as I can find, the NORAD emblem depicted on page 3,
panel 4 has never been in use by NORAD. There is a somewhat
similar motif that was used by the Army Security Agency (now
known as United States Army Intelligence and Security
Command). |
 |
 |
NORAD Command Center emblem in this issue |
Army Security Agency patch |
As throughout this NOW Comics comic book series, the company
that created Skynet is called Techno-Dyne (or, at times,
Technodyne) instead of Cyberdyne.
On page 5, panel 1, as DIX-190 speaks to the Skynet
hologram, notice there appear to be human brains suspended
in fluid-filled glass canisters in the background!
On page 7, Skynet states that DIX-190 is a Techno-Dyne
Terminator Unit 101, created nearly 30 years ago. This is
meant to be analogous to the Cyberdyne model 101 seen in
The Terminator, though
in the film the 101's weren't created until around 2029.
Since the current story takes place in 2031, that would mean
the 101 model seen here was created in the early 2000s.
Tama's dog doesn't have any name beyond "Dog"; Tama thinks
it's stupid to name animals.
Sister Claire's shirt pocket has IVF printed on it. We learn
later it stands for In Vitro Fertilization, a
method of artificially fertilizing a female egg with male
sperm (so-called "test tube babies").
In Vitro
is Latin for "in glass".
Sister Claire's resistance cell makes its base inside Mort
Dizzy World in Orlando. This is a fictitious amusement park
based on the real
Walt Disney World which has existed in
Orlando,
Florida since
1971. This is why Tama kept calling the place she was taking
Konrad and Tim to, "the magic place"; the
Magic Kingdom is the first of the four parks that exist
within Disney World.
One of the rides seen within Dizzy World is Never Dream
Land. It seems to be based on the Neverland concept from the
stories of Peter Pan created by J.M. Barrie in 1904.
Walt Disney Pictures made an animated Peter Pan
film in 1953 and, later a ride at
Disneyland in Anaheim, CA. Claire even tells Konrad that
the Never Dream Land ride was the inspiration for the name
of the boy Peter in this issue.
On page 16, panel 4, "miracle" is mistakenly spelled
"mircle".
On page 17, panel 3, the doors to Dr. Potterwax's embryo
tanks are labeled "embryo tanks". But when he pushes them
open in the next panel the signs are gone.
Sister Gladys, whom Tama is seen talking to in the cafeteria
on page 20, appears to be wearing a pendant of an
upside-down cross. This is the Cross of St. Peter, a symbol
representing humility in comparison to Jesus, based on a
Christian legend that St. Peter, when he was sentenced to
crucifixion by the Romans, asked that he be crucified
upside-down, as he was not worthy to die in the same manner
as Jesus.
In this issue and next, John Connor's last name is mistakenly
spelled "Conner".
Savoy relates to Konrad how John Connor and his forces freed
him and other survivors from Skynet's Atlanta death camp
"five years ago". This would mean it occurred in 2026.
Atlanta
is the capital city of the U.S. state of Georgia.
Savoy goes on to say that John Connor was like a messiah.
There are, in fact, many intentional parallels in various
Terminator stories with the concept of John being a
messiah, including the frequent trope in fiction of giving
the character in question the same initials as Jesus Christ.
Savoy explains that the in vitro fertilization and
artificial womb project was conceived by John Connor as a
way to possibly increase human population without tying down
half his fighting forces through pregnancies.
Skynet takes on the holographic guise of both a demon and a
circus ringmaster at different points in this issue! As
stated in previous studies of the NOW Comics series, Skynet
and its Terminators are given rather strange human-like
personality quirks.
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