The end isn't just near. The end is hear. And now what do you do?

If the comic book issues of Terminator The Burning Earth which I had previously reviewed was a vision of the Terminator universe emerging from the first Terminator movie, Terminator Infinity issue 1 is very much a product of T3, the latest Terminator movie (though for some reason, probably a licensing issue, the Terminator Infinity issues are titled Terminator 2). Where Terminator The Burning Earth was the first Terminator comic book adaptation, Terminator Infinity is the latest Terminator comic book adaptation. Between them the issues cross a gap of two decades and two visions of the Terminator universe, namely that of the original Terminator director and visionary James Cameron and the Terminator 3 continuation.

True to form where Terminator the Burning Earth was a straight line story about destroying Skynet, Terminator Infinity takes a more circuitous direction beginning with Judgement Day and taking a turn into the realm of Star Trek with temporal anomalies and the need to purge the timeline that are more reminiscent of Star Trek Voyager's Year of Hell two part episode or Star Trek Enterprise's whole Temporal Cold War premise than anything else. While the story has just begun evolving in Terminator Infinity #1 it already appears to be clear that it may be shaping up to be a sort of Terminator Skynet civil war with the wild card being Terminator Infinity, a Terminator who can apparently travel through time and is part energy based and part steel.

The problem of creating an uber-terminator that can top the T-1000 in Terminator 2 is a tricky one that had haunted T3, whose naked chick Terminator never held a candle to the T-1000 for all her superpowers, primarily because the T-1000 was an elemental form of menace that moved the Terminators beyond merely unstoppable killers into the realm of wraiths, able to transform shape, to pass as anyone, to penetrate any place and to be impossible to kill. Only time and future issues will tell if Terminator Infinity can surpass the T-1000 for coolness and sheer ability to terrify and amaze, but I have my doubts.

It is also a long way from the rugged bearded and world weary John Connor of Terminator Burning Earth to the Emo'ish John Connor oh Terminator Infinity, complete with spiky hair and a petulant pout. Of course by the end of the issue John has become the hero he was always meant to be or at least started to but his immediate rescue by another Terminator, styling himself Uncle Bob, really punctures whatever tension had built up all along.

The extensive exposition at the beginning of the issue seriously slows down the story from what should be a powerful opening as humanity is annihilated in a burst of flame. John Connor's sulky pouting is meant to be part of his evolution into the leader of men he will become but it breaks with the conclusion of Terminator 3 which had him beginning to play a role in the war effort, instead giving us a drunken brat. The conclusion of Issue 1 only pushes that impression further as his first courageous act ends with him having to be pulled out of the mess by an 'adult' figure.

While Terminator The Burning Earth got a lot wrong, it did understand the absolute stakes that humanity was playing for and that the stakes demanded men and women who were as hard and desperate as the circumstances themselves. Terminator Infinity shows us not only a John Connor who does not seem to get that but writers who don't seem to get it either.

At the core of things the strength of the post-apocalyptic story is survivalism, being forced to make your own way in a destroyed world and through its demolished streets and cavernous atom blasted valleys with nothing to fall back on but your wits, your skills and your hardscrabble determination to survive.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines began the problem by giving us a John Connor who was substantially less mature and capable than his younger self played by Edward Furlong had been in Terminator 2. That didn't help matters. Terminator Infinity makes it worse. The Scifi premise of a timeline war may fit well with the attempt to expand the Terminator universe as much as possible, Marvel style, by tunneling back and forth and creating alternate universes and complex alliances. The opening does suggest an attempt to pay homage to the first Terminator movie but in total, it all combines to weaken what should be the greatest strength of the story, John Connor facing down his destiny and in the face of apocalypse, emerging as a leader who is determined not to give up. And that is not what we see in Terminator Infinity.

John Connor's nightmare is unnecessary. So is his exposition. Frankly anyone who does not know the premise of the Terminator universe is either living under a rock and probably will not be buying this issue anyway. And even if they do, the recitation of the backstory is itself completely pointless as we will not be encountering John's mother and if we do it will be in the past, when the events can be replayed, rather than vomited forth as a series of expositionary dialogues that slow the pace of the story to a bare crawl.

The Uncle Bob Terminator 880 shows a certain amount of quirky wit. A balding ordinary seeming male would in reality make a perfect Terminator unit, whose goal after all is to be inconspicuous and is a welcome departure from the repeated attempts to create female terminators or Ahrnold clones but even from Uncle Bob's single line, it seems as if they are creating him with far too much personality, which again takes Terminator Infinity along the lines of more conventional comic book titles but simply ignores what makes Terminator work.

While Nigel Raynor cannot hope to compete with Alex Ross in the art department, Terminator Infinity features some striking scenes, if modernstically framed. The coloring tends to unsubtle though making for some cartoonishly rendered scenes. Simon Furman has mainly worked on Transformers comics in the past and his writing never ventures very far from cliche or unnecessary overcomplication.

Terminator Infinity Issue 1 makes for an interesting beginning but we will have to see what future issues will bring.