TERMINAL is an ambitious new ongoing series from the minds of Robert Kirkman and Joe Casey, with art by Andy Kubert, and colors by Dave McCaig. To say the first issue is eye-popping is accurate in every sense of the term. It’s also a throwback to the “widescreen” team comics of the 90s with the gradual revelation of two warring factions of superbeings….but just who is good and who is evil might take a while to discover.
Launching a whole new set of superheroes can be tough in the comics market, but if this crew can’t do it, no one can. And who knows…it seems like the time is right for a big event comic from an all-star team.
Kirkman, Casey and Kubert sat down for a chat to discuss the origins of and plans for TERMINAL. If you’re the type of person who likes to watch YouTube you can do that above – those who prefer the written word and want to read an edited transcript, just keep scrolling!
THE BEAT: So I gotta ask first, Robert, I’ve been itching to talk to you about this, at Comics Pro back in February. When you gave your keynote address, you were talking about the need for new characters, and you mentioned Terminal, putting your money where your mouth is, right? And so, tell me about that.
ROBERT KIRKMAN: After doing Invincible for so long, I’m getting back into superheroes, but doing something that’s completely off the beaten path and is completely different than what we were able to do with Invincible. It brings in a lot of cool horror elements, and has a lot of Nineties energy to it, and it just.. I don’t know, it feels like the coolest, scariest X-Men book that could exist. So, we’re just trying to bring something new to the industry, but also take elements that have worked in the past that aren’t really being used as much these days, and kind of bring those back. We’re coming at this book from a bunch of different angles, trying to make it as cool as possible, and hopefully we have succeeded.
THE BEAT: Well, you started with a giant eyeball, so that’s pretty much all you need in my book.
KIRKMAN: Can’t go wrong with a giant eyeball.
THE BEAT: This is going to be a whole big long Heidi essay one of these days, the industry has had a hard time embracing new concepts for a while, even things that are throwback. I think absolutely, after reading this it’s definitely a bit of a throwback book, but you know it’s got all these new characters in it, new team, new world, new all that. Joe and Andy, I’d love to hear from you as well. Some people say, Oh Invincibles, it’s new, but it’s 20 years old.
KIRKMAN: Correct.
THE BEAT: So why do you think the industry has been a little…they’re not excited by a new thing anymore.
KIRKMAN: Well, I don’t think that that’s completely original or just something that the comic industry does. I think that new ideas and new concepts always struggle, just because people buy what they’re accustomed to, they like what they’re familiar with, and something has to be, you know, undeniable and exciting for things to really catch on. So as much as it is frustrating about our industry, I don’t think it’s only our industry’s problem. But I think that it’s up to us as creators to fight against that, to bring new ideas, take risks with new ideas, and try to inject as much newness and energy into this industry that we love as often as we can,
THE BEAT: Right.
JOE CASEY: There’s so many gatekeepers in any entertainment industry, and there’s countless stories where great ideas just have the hardest time getting through. The ones that do and break out, it makes those gatekeepers look like idiots most of the time. And here’s a unique opportunity – we’re the gatekeepers of this idea, and so we’re taking full advantage of that power. We’re power mad, Heidi, so we’re going for it with this book on just about every level you can imagine, because we all have been through the hell of trying to convince somebody that an idea was good and was valuable, and we’ve all fought for those opportunities to get those ideas out into the world. And we’re kind of beyond that at this point luckily, in terms of comic books, anyway. So, if you’re lucky enough to be in that position, you’ve got to take advantage of it, and do the best work that you’re capable of doing, put out the best product, and build the best world that’s going to get people excited and involved, and so we’ve done it. Somebody’s gotta save comics. Might as well be us.
THE BEAT: There we go. Well, we’ve got a team here that can do it. Andy, how about you? You sat down, you got to create a whole new set of superheroes here, or – I say superheroes. Super characters. At the end of the first issue it’s really not clear who’s the good guy, who’s the bad guy. But anyway, super characters. What was your initial reaction to getting to create a whole new bunch of characters?
ANDY KUBERT: It’s always when you’re staring at a blank page, and you’re reading descriptions, when you talk with the writers about what you’re going to do, it’s always pretty, what’s the word, intimidating, I guess. It’s kind of like when I first started on Dark Knight III, and I’m staring at a blank page, and here I am, following Frank Miller on this. It was very, very intimidating at first, but once you get rolling and you get it into your head as to what you want to do, then it kind of scoots along pretty good. But, like Joe said, you try to do the best you can, and that’s what all of us do, and that’s what we’ve always been doing through our whole careers.Hopefully whatever we do resonates with with fans, and I think this project will definitely.
THE BEAT: What were some of the initial thoughts? I mean, Robert, you mentioned wanting to do something that was new, but with some of the elements of the 90s stuff that we love so much. Did you come up with the idea? Did you think I’ve got to get Joe Casey on this?
KIRKMAN: Joe’s one of the oldest friends I have in the industry. I mean, he goes back all the way to the Funkatron days. Joe and I get together often, and we’re always talking about stuff, and I’m always game to work with somebody I’m friends with. The initial idea for Terminal is something that I had been kicking around for a while. It was something that I knew I wanted to do, another very big, complex, expansive superhero story that had some horror elements to it, and had a darkness and an edge to it. Joe seemed like the perfect candidate to help me build this into something viable, just because it is so complex and complicated, it’s not something that I felt like I could necessarily get a handle on all on my own. Joe is somebody that has a tremendous amount of experience doing the kinds of books that I wanted this to be, between his X-Men run, his Wildcats run, and various other team books, and Avengers comics, that he’s written. He just excels at juggling large casts and doing team books, and, so I knew he was somebody that could really like help me turn this into something really cool,
THE BEAT: What appeals to you about doing this really complicated universe? Obviously, you’ve done a couple of them now, at least two, Invincible and THe Walking Dead, that are household names.
KIRKMAN: I’ll just say, I get bored very easily, and it’s nice to have a lot of characters you can jump to for subplots very often, because it keeps things moving,
CASEY: That is the dynamic of team books, that every character, in a sense, can be their own genre, so you have access to telling all these different kinds of stories. I think we did a pretty good job of the cast on both sides of the conflict, having different backgrounds and different motivations, and different things to touch on. So that’s the bigness of the world that we built, is that every character has their own story, and as far ahead as we are at this point, we’re just scratching the surface of telling them, which is exciting, because there’s a lot of ground to cover.
THE BEAT: How did you work on this? Did you do a bible for it, or do you have, post it notes on the wall, or [laughs] are you using project management software? How do you all collaborate and keep it all straight?
KIRKMAN: It all exists in an oral document that Joe and I keep together at lunches and things. We’ve gotten together for many sessions and worked on like a big dry erase board and like figured out like various different things, and I know there’s a few series documents detailing characters and backstories and things like that, but for the most part, it’s comics, and we’re just having fun, and so it all just exists in the ether.
KUBERT: I do have a sketchbook, though, some kind of journal.
THE BEAT: Do you like designing characters? Is that something you get a kick out of?
KUBERT: It’s hard designing characters, It’s very, very tough. Designing characters, laying out pages, doing storytelling, all that stuff is tough. The actual drawing part is easy once you get the characters designs down and all that. Then, it’s a breeze. It’s always nice to see other artists take on it too, like when David Finch or Art Adams, they’re doing the variant covers, or even in their interiors, they’re drawing characters that I design. It’s awesome to see their take on it, because they’ll do little nuances in it. Then I say, “Oh, that’s kind of cool,” and I’ll borrow that.
THE BEAT: Aw Andy, you make it look easy. Come on, man.
KUBERT: So you should ask my wife how many times I’ve knocked my head against the drawing board! [general laughter] Even before this call. She goes, “Just calm down and it’ll be okay. I’m like, “Okay.
THE BEAT: Robert and Joe, what made Andy the right guy for this? Was it to get his wife more upset? [general laughter]
KIRKMAN: Mostly the wife thing. No, Andy is one of the greatest comic book artists who ever lived. He is definitely, he’s a Mount Rushmore of comics eligible artist, and somebody that Joe and I have been a fan of for many, many, many years, somebody that I’ve always been dying to work with. Andy is somebody that has just like a real energy and dynamism. Joe, was that a word?
THE BEAT: It is. It is comics
KIRKMAN: He’s great. His pages are so energetic and dynamic, and he just pours everything into the pages, and we knew that we had this complex world with all these characters, and the idea of seeing them through Andy’s lens was, just the prospect of that was mind-blowing. So the fact that it came together is really flooring.
CASEY: Robert told me he was going to get Andy on board, or it was going to try to get him on board. I said no way, he ain’t doing this. And then he got it, which is amazing. And so it’s almost like getting pages from Andy’s like the gift that keeps on giving. Every couple of weeks this little batch of pages come in, and it’s just.. it’s the greatest thing to be the first people to see these things.
KUBERT: I’m done now. [laughter]
THE BEAT: Well let me just trowel it on a little bit more. I think the first splash page in the first issue with that little horror tinge, definitely, it’s a good one. If you’re not not on board [when you see] that page…. just…
KUBERT: The eye-popping page,
THE BEAT: Yes! We’ll leave it at that. Everyone is going to be talking about Maculax for sure, but the first issue, as I alluded to before, it really is so much set up, at the end, you are like, I don’t know where we’re going with this. We have the fake out, we have the big shock, we have the viewpoint character who enters us into this kind of superhero compound of people that this giant eyeball has gathered together for a purpose, so you think you know where it’s going, and, and then 52 pickup, man! Where are we going? If you were going to give this the elevator pitch about the story, how would you describe it.
KIRKMAN: Terminal is a very complex story about a secret war between two factions that are fighting to recruit more and more powerful people from the population and enlist them in this conflict, and so it is, in a sense, a war comic to a certain extent. So, you are going to have casualties quite frequently. What we wanted to accomplish with that first issue is to introduce the readership to this world, hopefully show them some characters that they are interested in, giving them some intriguing tidbits of what the story may be and what it may entail, and then leave them guessing and wanting for more. The first issue is a bit of a tease, but I don’t know. More than anything, every single issue of this book is just going to be designed to make you want to read the next issue as soon as possible.
THE BEAT: So it is back into the breach once more, friends. Joe, you have written a lot of team books over the years, and there’s quite a few reversals of this first issue. Do you build an issue around those reversals? Do you sit down and think of the shocker first and then go in?
CASEY: It’s one of those things where, yeah, it’s shocking, but it also establishes the stakes, and dramatically, that was very important for the first issue. We wanted to set down the stakes of this conflict, for the characters, for the universe, for everything that’s going on. And those stakes get higher and higher with each story, with each issue, with each story arc, and that was kind of the challenge that we all set down. How can we build this thing so that with each issue it gets more serious and more intense, and the shock value is great, but there’s really a lot of emotion behind this one, and every one that comes after it.
THE BEAT: Totally. You do have the murderer’s row, as Andy alluded to, you have variant covers by the superstars of comics. You didn’t hold back on this, right? You went all out. How much is that part of making this a big event?
KIRKMAN: Yeah, between the blind bag program and the variant covers that we’ve got, we want this to be an event for comic book shops. We want people to be in the stores, opening the bags, excited about what they get. We’re certainly not revealing what’s in the blind bags, but there are some very exciting special comics that are absolutely insane, that when you open the bag and see what’s inside, that’s going to be a moment of excitement. But yeah, everything about our launch is to try and make this feel like an event, and drive people into comic book shops and make that a special place for people to experience this, and yeah, make people excited about the future of this series.
THE BEAT: We’re running out of time here, but how long do you think Terminal will last?
KIRKMAN: Hopefully, for years and years. I mean, it’s an open-ended regular series, I could see it reaching issue 50, I could see it reaching issue 100. I could see it reaching issue 1000
THE BEAT: There you go. So,any final words for our listeners or viewers? What do you hope they get out of Terminal Issue One?
CASEY: If you want a book that has the balls to do what Marvel, DC, or any other publisher would never dare to do, this is the book for you, and the eyeball is only the first body part that’s going to be exploding out of people’s bodies. It’s going to get more nuts and more insane as the series goes on. I can’t wait.
TERMINAL #1 is published by Skybound and is on FOC today, May 25th, and goes on sale on July 22, 2026, with covers by Andy Kubert, Andres Juarez, Frank Miller, Rob Liefeld, Marc Silvestri, Art Adams and more!
