The Terminator by Kev Crossley

I met Kev Crossley at a few conventions between 2000 and 2005, and really enjoyed his interpretation of classic robots. As he was always so ready and willing to turn out these great little convention sketches I decided it only fair to get a real, full on, commission piece.
I asked for his version of The Terminator, and that's what I got.

Wow.
Kev never disappoints.

The Terminator... from StarBlazer No. 174.

StarBlazer was a Science Fiction version of Commando.
The same format, the same quality of story telling and artwork.

What StarBlazer had above Commando though was that it wasn't constrained by fact and historical events.
in Issue 174 (from 1986) then we had The Terminator, which was kind of a mix between Judge Dredd and Robocop.

There are some neat little ideas in here, and whilst the story is told in the typical way (these books did tend to spoon feed the reader a bit too much at times) it's a great little read.
It doesn't shy away from death, and the robot follows its programming to the letter. It announces the reason for the judgement and then carries it out. No messing.

Of course, as usual, humans are behind all the bad things that the robot does, he is after all 'only following his programming'. Marshal Skarr soon finds himself being hunted by the Terminator, his only crime really being that of 'getting in the way'.

It turns out that there's an alien invasion threat and human greed behind it all and Skarr saves the day, despite escaping almost certain death a few times on the way.

An interesting robot design. Almost as if he doesn't have a head, and 'Yes', The Terminator movie came out a couple of years before this saw print so they probably used the title to try to attract a few more readers, and made the robot look completely different to avoid a lawsuit or two.

Terminator by Garry Brown.

Well, as Arnold Schwarzenegger is looking to resurrect his acting career (I use the term loosely) with his return to the role that made his a household name, I thought it appropriate to have a Terminator commission up here.
I watched the Terminator films as they came out but lost interest with the third and didn't bother with the fourth until the DVD was cheap. They really need to do something fresh if they are going to capture my interest again.

Garry Brown did some work for the earlier Accent UK anthologies and I knew from the offset that he'd do well in the industry. Since those days he's gone on to work for the major companies and at the moment is illustrating The Massive for Dark Horse.
As you can see, he does great black and white images.