Superman Vs. The Terminator: Death to the Future Written by Alan Grant (!!!!!!???!!!!!!!) Pencils by Steve Pugh Inks by Steve Pugh & Mike Perkins Colours by David Stewart Letters by Clem Robins Published in the UK by Titan Books @ £10.99 Buy from Amazon

Urgl…

Look, let's get one thing straight; I am not a Super- man, -boy, -girl, -dog, -foetus, -whatever fan. I'm just not. Never have been. That said, Crisis on Infinite Earths at least kept my attention over its massive twelve issues. Death to the Future is much smaller and took three readings to get through.

The plot has Sarah and John Connor travelling to Metropolis. Almost immediately, Terminators start popping out of the woodwork everywhere, at every turn. A cyborg called The Cyborg decides to set Superman up for a fall and downloads info into a Terminator skull; a kind of message in a bottle. While trying to save Sarah and John, Superman gets sucked into the future by Steel and the grown up John Connor. In the future, Superman and Steel defeat Skynet, while in the now, Supergirl and Superboy knock off a seemingly endless stream of Terminators. In the end, Lex Luthor spoils the party.

The Terminator thing has been done to death. Just stop it, please!!! This book is a shocking waste of time, paper and talent. It really is pants. The art is uninspired, the colours garish, the plot basically as good as it could be, the dialogue clunky in the way only a Superman book could be. I think everyone who worked on this must have just collected their pay at the end of the project and gone off for a stiff drink to console themselves.

Don't touch this book with someone else's twenty foot pole.

Like I say, urgle… 3/10

Review by Iain Lowson