SDCC 2024: Dynamite Announces New Terminator Comic From Declan Shalvey

The fight for tomorrow begins today. 40 years after the rogue artificial intelligence Skynet sent a killing machine (Arnold Schwarzenegger) time-traveling from 2029 to 1984 to assassinate Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) in James Cameron’s The Terminator, Dynamite is revealing an all-new chapter in the future war between humans and machines. San Diego Comic-Con kicked off with the publisher announcing new comic book The Terminator, a present-set anthology series from award-winning writer Declan Shalvey (Dynamite’s ThunderCats) and artist Luke Sparrow (IDW’s Star Trek). 

Out in October, The Terminator #1 hits stands just in time for the 40th anniversary of Cameron’s original sci-fi classic.

“Theapproach of this series is new situations, new dilemmas in each issue.Mostly done-in-one stories, but as the series progresses there may besome recognizable faces,” Shalvey teased. “We’re going for amore stripped-down, pulpy approach to the book. As innovative andgroundbreaking as the first film was, it was also grounded in itsenvironment, being noir-ish and moody as hell. An unstoppable force iscoming to kill you — that’s the element of the franchise I want to leaninto.”

Theplans to kill Sarah Connor and her son — future Resistance leader John Connor — have failed, but that isn’tgoing to stop the genocidal Skynet. If at first it doesn’t succeed,it’s going to expand the theater of operations. There are still a fewmore avenues into the past to try that will allow it to eliminate thehuman resistance before it even starts. Skynet and its Terminators aredetermined to stamp out these pivotal figures in history before theylead to their processors being smashed into silicon shrapnel.

Thisnew front in the time war comes with Terminators dispatched all acrossthe globe and throughout time to target not only current resistancefighters but also their ancestors — as well as any unlucky souls caughtin the crossfire. Though at first it may not seem that this wide rangeof secondary objectives are as straightforward or critical as theoriginal missions of the T-800 and T-1000, the sheer scope of this newwarfare defies that. Time is literally on Skynet’s side — when all ofhistory becomes a war zone, suddenly nowhere — and no-when is safe.

Along with the standard cover by Shalvey, a series of just-revealed variant covers (above) include new pieces by artists Edwin Galmon (ThunderCats), Joshua “Sway” Swaby (Marvel’s Star Wars: Doctor Aphra), David Cousens (Splice’s Gemini), and a throwback Icon Cover by Alex Ross (Terminator: The Burning Earth). Get a first look at the teen-rated comic’s interior artwork below.

Dynamite’s The Terminator marks the franchise’s first comic book since the IDW and Dark Horse crossover comic Transformers vs. the Terminator in 2020. The Boys publisher released the Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines comic sequel Terminator: Infinity (2007), the second part of its T2 saga, Terminator: Revolution (2009), and the crossover Terminator/RoboCop: Kill Human (2012). 

The StudioCanal-owned sci-fi saga next expands with the new anime Terminator Zero set in 1997 Tokyo. Stay tuned to ComicBook.com for the latest news and updates out of SDCC 2024.