Love is in the air at Cyberdyne, right before everything goes wrong. Dynamite Entertainment and Studiocanal have announced The Terminator Valentine’s Day Special 2027, a 30-page one-shot from writer Dan Watters and artist Pasquale Qualano set in the days before a fateful product launch.
Jack, Jill and the dawn of Skynet
The story follows Jack and Jill, two Cyberdyne employees whose workplace romance once seemed like something out of a fairy tale. After a whirlwind courtship and a year together, the couple could not have been happier. Lately, though, Jack has grown distant, barely acknowledging Jill, and she is left wondering why.
“The answer is that Jack has become single-mindedly obsessed with work,” the synopsis reads. “He’s locked in on the upcoming project they’ve both been working on, the background track to their passionate entanglement. Their employer Cyberdyne, the Cyber Dynamics Systems Corporation, has a major product launch — literally — around the corner. Their first surveillance satellite is scheduled to lift off February 14, 1987! Can love survive at the genesis of Skynet, before the rise of the machines, and as the terrifying Terminators loom in the future?”
It is a fitting angle for the franchise. As The Comics Beat points out, the original 1984 film was built around the romance between Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese.
The creative team
This is Watters’ first solo writing project at Dynamite. His only earlier book there was The Shadow: Leviathan, co-written with Si Spurrier. He has since written Batman: Dark Patterns and Nightwing at DC, and his Spider-Woman relaunch at Marvel starts November 4. Qualano has drawn Vampirella, Red Sonja, Gargoyles and Supernatural for Dynamite, and this is his first Terminator comic.
The special is scheduled for January 2027, ahead of Valentine’s Day, with three covers by Björn Barends, Francesco Mattina and Stuart Sayger.
Dynamite has been leaning into the Terminator license lately. Its crossover Archie vs. The Terminator #1 is on shelves now, and this one-shot gives fans a smaller, stranger story from inside the company that builds the machines. It is not the most romantic Valentine’s gift you could buy, but it might be the most on-brand one for a Terminator fan.
