The Terminator #1
The Terminator #1 (Dynamite, October 2024) marks the Terminator franchise's return to comics after a four-year absence — the first new Terminator comic book since the IDW/Dark Horse crossover Transformers vs. The Terminator in 2020. Arriving precisely on the 40th anniversary of James Cameron's original 1984 film, the series self-consciously roots itself in the continuity of that first movie rather than the broader, increasingly tangled franchise mythology, recapturing the stripped-down pulp-noir dread of the source material at a moment when real-world anxiety about artificial intelligence gave those themes fresh cultural urgency. Its done-in-one anthology structure — a T-800 stalking different victims across time and geography each issue — offered a formally distinctive model for licensed-property storytelling, one that prioritized stand-alone dramatic impact over decompressed serialization.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
Dynamite Entertainment secured a new licensing agreement with STUDIOCANAL S.A.S. (the rights holder to the Terminator IP) in early 2024, initially announced alongside a BackerKit campaign to reprint classic Terminator comics from NOW Comics and Dark Horse in chronological order for the franchise's 40th anniversary. The creative announcement for an all-new ongoing series came at San Diego Comic-Con 2024, where writer Declan Shalvey — fresh off a high-profile ThunderCats run for Dynamite — revealed he had recruited artist Luke Sparrow, whose work Shalvey had first seen on an Old Dog anthology story, effectively using those pages as an informal audition for the Terminator assignment. Shalvey described the series' guiding philosophy as 'Quantum Leap from Hell': each issue a new scenario, a new set of human characters to care about, all sharing a single relentless mechanical antagonist — a structural approach explicitly drawn from the tight, grounded thriller identity of Cameron's original film rather than the spectacle of its sequels.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published by Dynamite Entertainment; on-sale date October 9, 2024 — timed to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the original 1984 James Cameron film.
- Written by Declan Shalvey; interior art by Luke Sparrow, with backup story contributions by Sal Crivelli and Colin Craker across the series.
- The series ran for 10 issues and is set strictly within the continuity of the first Terminator film, not later sequels.
- Structured primarily as done-in-one stories: each issue follows a T-800 stalking a different target across a different time period and location, with occasional two-part arcs woven in.
- Marks the Terminator franchise's first new comic book publication since Transformers vs. The Terminator (IDW/Dark Horse, 2020).
- Cover A was drawn by Shalvey himself; variant covers for issue #1 were provided by Edwin Galmon, Joshua 'Sway' Swaby, and David Cousens, plus a special 'Icon Cover' reprinting early Alex Ross artwork from The Terminator: The Burning Earth (NOW Comics, 1990).
- Spawned a sequel series, The Terminator: Metal (Dynamite, October 2025), co-written by Shalvey and Rory McConville with art by Lorenzo Re, shifting focus to the future war era.
- The series received generally positive critical notices, averaging an 8.4/10 on Comic Book Roundup across its run.
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