Then came Dynamite’s Terminator/RoboCop: Kill Human by Rob Williams and PJ Holden. Again, I talked about it during my RoboCop article way back when, but the short of it is that it’s easily the worst Terminator story. It’s so bad.

Coincidentally, the setup shares some similarities with Terminator: Genisys (RoboCop goes back decades before the first movie and sets a bunch of plans in motion to prevent Judgment Day), but no matter how much you may have felt let down by the latest sequel, know this: it’s still head and shoulders better than this RoboCop crossover. It’s that awful.

Dark Horse released two more minis concurrently in 2014. One is a six-issue series called Terminator: Enemy of My Enemy, and it is totally badass. It’s by Dan Jolley and Jamal Igle. It’s about Farrow Greene, a hired gun and expert asskicker, scarred by her past. She’s hired to capture a scientist named Elise Fong alive, but things go awry when a T-800 tries to kill Fong (due to an invention she’ll one day create). Greene is good enough to hold her own, but is freaked out when she sees the chrome underneath the skin and tries to get to the bottom of it.

A third party kidnaps Fong. Greene and the Terminator fight to a standstill once again, but this time, things get really interesting. Greene points out that they both want Fong. They’re enemies and they’re at odds with what to do with her, but together, they can help each other out.

So you get a bounty hunter and a secretive cyborg working side-by-side, knowing that once they reach the end of their adventure, they’re going to go at it one final time. That’s so awesome you don’t even know.

Last and certainly not least is Terminator Salvation: The Final Battle, a 12-issue series by J. Michael Straczynski and Pete Woods. Shockingly, JMS actually hits his deadlines on this project and doesn’t skip out on it after three issues!

JMS makes lemonade out of Salvation’s damaged lemons by having to come up with a pleasing finale to the Terminator universe. It focuses mostly on the elements of that movie, including the return of Dr. Kogan (the cancer-ridden doctor) and the resurrection of Marcus. It includes elements of the other movies, such as how John knows that at some point he’s going to be murdered by an Arnold-looking T-800, but for some strange reason completely neglects anything to do with the T-1000 or T-X. Neither are referenced in any way.

The plot deals with Dr. Kogan, reborn as a Terminator using the same technology that made Marcus a cyborg, revealing that Marcus was simply a prototype. He wasn’t created simply to be a spy, but to lead to the cyber evolution of Thomas Parnell, a 100% insane serial killer. See, SkyNet is going to lose the war because despite being powerful, the Terminators fight via logic and order and that’s their downfall. Parnell is made into a cyborg and is tapped into controlling a bunch of the robots. Now they’re expert killers, and they slaughter everyone in their way.

Not only does this not bode well for the humans, but Parnell is growing more and more powerful by the minute, and this isn’t boding well for SkyNet. Surprisingly, JMS goes to great lengths to actually humanize SkyNet and pulls it off, giving us a final few issues that are completely batshit, but work out.

If anything, the story gives what may be my favorite Terminator comic moment. In all these stories, all the way back to the end of the first film, they talk up how hard it must be for John to send Kyle back in time to his death. They beat us over the head with it. But what about the T-800? Despite meeting the machine for the first time, John is able to say his final goodbyes and thank the confused machine for everything he’s going to do/has already done.

Damn that’s good. We’ve really come a long way from the days of Konrad doing backflips and throwing alligators around.

By my count, there are 125 issues of Terminator comics out there. After going through the RoboCop comics, I figured I’d be in for the same 1:1 ratio of good to bad. Really, though? For the most part, Terminator comics have been pretty damn good. Tons of top name writers and artists have had their go at this franchise, and they’ve shown more invention and foresight than a good chunk of the movie scriptwriters.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe we shouldn’t simply leave the franchise be. Maybe we just need to wait for the right person to take the wheel and drive us home.

Gavin Jasper listened to “You Could Be Mine” many, many times while writing this. Follow him on Twitter!