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"The Dark Years" Part 3
Terminator: The Dark Years #3
Dark Horse
Writer: Alan Grant
Penciler: Mel Rubi
Inkers: Andrew Pepoy and Howard Shum
Cover: Jae Lee
November 1999 |
John Connor finds himself at the wrong end of a gun barrel in two
time periods.
Read the
complete story summary at the Terminator Wiki
Notes from the Terminator chronology
In this issue, the future installments of the storyline are
suddenly said to take place in 2031 instead of 2030 as in
the previous two issues. But the year reverts back to 2030
in
"The Dark Years" Part 4, so it appears the 2031
mentions here were just a mistake that got past the editor.
Didja Notice?
On the cover, the skyscraper seen in the flames is the
Empire
State Building, which also appears within the story.
1999: On page 1, the taxi driver says he and John are racing
down Fifth Avenue. Fifth Avenue is a major thoroughfare in
the Manhattan borough of New York.
1999: On page 2, the Terminator jumps his stolen motorcycle
over a
Volkswagen Beetle.
1999: On page 4, the taxi driver makes a turn off
Fifth
Avenue in an attempt to lose the pursuing Terminator.
The car soon passes a
Macy's
department store. The taxi is likely on 134th Street now,
just two blocks from Fifth Avenue, where there is an actual
Macy's store.
2031: John tells the council of war that the machines have a
new facility for experimenting on humans underneath the
Ubank Shopping Mall. This appears to be a fictitious
location and I'm unaware of a business entity by the "Ubank"
name at the time the story was written, 1999 (though National
Australia Bank did launch an online banking network called
Ubank in 2008).
2031: On page 7, Norden recognizes Selina's dissociative
symptoms as that of what he refers to as "ongoing war
syndrome". As far as I can tell, this is not a recognized
psychological term.
2031: On page 8, Billy X refers to someone who would sell
humanity out to the robots as a "skel". This is a slang term
for "lowlife".
2031: On page 9, a previously unseen type of attack copter
is used by the machines against the human resistance.

2031: Conscious of a possible traitor in their midst, one of
the resistance members refers to Norden as "Judas" on page
17. This is a reference to the
betrayal of Jesus by Judas Iscariot for 30 pieces of silver
in the New Testament of the Bible.
1999:
The narrative on page 18 describes how many people believed
the millennium would usher in the end of the world, maybe
from a rogue comet or aliens. It goes on to say, "It didn't
occur to anyone that the threat might come from their own
technology..." Well, actually, many people did think our
technology would bring about an end of the world, of sorts.
Not from killer machines as foreshadowed here, but from the
Y2K bug (see the discussion in
"The Dark Years" Part 1).
|
1999: The entrance of the Empire
State Building on page 18 does not
look quite like it does in real
life. (Photo from
Wikipedia.) |
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1999: On page 18, panel 6, notice a fire extinguisher is
seen hanging on the wall as John ducks into the Empire State
Building. This becomes important in
"The Dark Years" Part 4, when he uses it against the
Terminator.
1999: On page 22, the
Chrysler Building appears in the background as John
looks from the observation deck of the Empire State
Building. The Chrysler Building is fairly close to the
Empire State Building in the real world, about 8 blocks
away, on Lexington Avenue (ESB is on Fifth Avenue).
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