Out this December, The Terminator: Santa Claus is Coming to Town. A holiday special set after judgement day. Written by Paulina Ganucheau and drawn by Kendall Goode (Me!). Here's the cover I got to do. There are a handful of other really cool covers so check them out too: https://comicbookclublive.com/2025/09/16/the-terminator-santa-claus-is-coming-to-town-dynamite/
Who’s got the crack? Terminator comics! @atamascolily, this one’s for you: a recap with pictures.
This was one of the earliest Terminator tie-in comics, by a now-defunct publisher, Now Comics in Chicago. In 1990, Now Comics lost the Terminator license. But before they did, they brought us Terminator: Burning Earth and this - Terminator: All My Futures Past.
All My Futures Past is supposed to be a story about how John Connor learned about the plot to time-travel-destroy him, and how Kyle Reese traveled through the time gate. It successfully evokes the weirder side of the Terminator franchise. Oddball moments. Messy fight scenes. Moving yet clunky dialogue. A fraught relationship with gender. And unintentional gayness.
Don’t get excited about the cover art because this has NOTHING to do with what’s inside.
Behind the cut: carefree youngster in leather jacket sets out to save mankind, meets John Connor and his pornstache, and gets his just Terminator-verse reward. 21 images and a recap await. Grab your chips!
First, this comic is about MANLY MEN. There are MEN and there are MACHINES!
Manly men with names like Breed and Lanny and Monk. Names that aren’t gender-ambiguous at all in any way.
The pilot, barely alive, gives them a box that contains data and says Terminators have the key to time. He implores them to get it to Connor in LA. Then, he dies, with prayers and show-not-tell about the postapocalyptic decline of Western civilisation. Yes, this does have a slow start.
Technology note: Why hasn’t a message been sent about this via, oh, any other media? Why does this take a face to face confrontation? Oddly, Terminator: Dark Fate has the answer. This is Legion-canon compatible if Legion starts out its AI world conquest by taking over radio waves and wireless data and blocking humans from using them.
They go to their local leader, an old guy in an aloha shirt named Texaco.
Lanny and Breed have no heterosexual responsibilities, so when they insist on trying to save 'all men’ (-headdesk-) Texaco sends them off with a Jaeger rifle.
It’s implied that this is partly to get rid of the young troublemakers who are ‘more carefree than most’. In matching leather jackets, they head away.
Technology note: Thatched roofs! I guess Home Depot has run out of shingles.
Oh no! When they reach Fresno, they run into some vintage-model Terminators! One of them kills Breed. A moment, please.
Lanny and his dog continue down California to Los Angeles. There’s a glimpse of humans enslaved by machines. Then...Los Angeles.
Where Lanny and his dog run into this timeline’s Resistance soldiers and their dogs. “You’re human, son. That don’t mean you’re on our side.” Interesting!
Also, Lanny starts to look awfully pretty in comparison to the other characters we run across. For they are MANLIER manly men!
John Connor, introduced in an oddly understated panel, hits it off with Lanny. Grateful for the message, John offers Lanny anything he wants. Lanny wants to see the mission through and join the team off to the Los Angeles tower where they’re going to do (mumble mumble) to stop it. Lanny leaves his dog with John. Of course the kid’s not in charge of the team. This is a job for…
Kyle Reese! After a hasty consultation, two best friends have, again, a touching farewell. “This one’s for all the chips, Reece.”
Ahem.
ONE PANEL WITH A WOMAN. Who is she? This timeline’s Grace? We’ll never know.
Kyle and Lanny are scratchy with each other at first. But soon they settle into a Sarah-and-Dani dynamic. Just in time for the next issue!
We begin issue 2 with one of Terminator comics’ trademark confusing fights. Deaths on the team mean Lanny is soon pulling his weight. Despite this, Reese is treating Lanny like some dumb kid, and the artist is treating this like the color version was due last week.
There’s a bunch of human prisoners inside the fortress they break into, including women and a screaming badly-rendered baby. EMP-like weapons are deployed. John, having also come to this location for reasons we don’t understand, has lost contact with his boyfrie- with Reese - via walkie-talkie and is frantic. It’s hard to tell what’s going on, confirming that we’re in a Terminator comic.
Suddenly they’re in – and they see the time gate set up. Alas for the beautifully rendered art of the first issue, we’re on deadline here.
They’re too late to keep a tastefully naked Terminator from going back in time. But not too late to see where it was going!
The prisoners are released – they were used to test the time gate, and they share information about it – John is able to communicate with Kyle again via walkie-talkie. Based on two minutes of narrative sense, John formally sends Kyle back in time.
Confusingly, Kyle’s team turn their back on the perfectly good timegate behind them and fight their way through to a prototype a half-kilometer away, with substantial casualties.
They get through and at Timegate #2 Kyle begins to strip. He’s determined to Go Back. But first, a word with Lanny, who is less intimidated by Nude Kyle Reese than the other soldiers. Kyle seems to be looking forwards to his trip. “I’m going back. I’ve got my reasons... If I can’t stop the Terminator from killing Sarah Connor I don’t want to come back!”
John and Kyle have their final exchange. Kyle gets the message for Sarah from John. Is he crying? Sweating? Has John had a mustache trim?
Lanny accurately describes the anticlimax of standing around after someone strips, yells a lot of emotionally intense stuff, and travels through time.
How does it end? Lanny has a rifle upgrade and gets his dog back. Amidst the burning wreckage of Los Angeles, he stands on a heap of Terminator skulls to pray for the doomed. By Terminator standards: winning!
And there you have it. Pray for Kyle Reese, and for all of us who’ve traversed the long path to making sense of any Terminator comic. So long and thanks for all the chips!
