Sometimes I’ll hold on to a series well past the point that I have determined I will not read it again, nor will I  be using it as reference to make my own comics. 

It’s this sense that if I were to get rid of the books it would be a betrayal of the financial investment, or the time it took to read, or my enjoyment of it at the time I read it. Some vague sense of emotional attachment that lets it sit there on my shelf, or tucked away in a box, well past the time I even remember I have it there. 

So I decided to make art about it. To help “say goodbye,” and to sever the ties constructively. To process that weird nebulous metaphorical weight and turn it into practice and growth.

Terrorwar, by Saladin Ahmed and Dave Acosta is one such book. On paper, pun very much intended, it should be right down my alley and a book, by all rights, I should be keeping. It’s cyberpunk and horror fused at the hip. Much like my comic Cannibal Crime. 

So why am I ditching it?  Why am I “Saying Goodbye to Terrorwar?”

In short: The ending dropped the ball hard. I’d argue that there’s a slide downwards after a strong start laying out the concept of the Terrors and terrorfighters (I’ve drawn my favourite terrorfighter, Rosie, tough girl obsessed with her bank balance,) and I’m personally mostly onboard with the book through its uninspired moments riiiiiiight up until our heroes wear the former antagonist-turned sympathetic monsters AS armour. 

It feels so goofy and unfulfilling when a concept as amazing as Credit Hounds, autonomous robot dogs who chase you down and maul you over debts owed in a dystopian vision of the Boston Dynamics future, is a foundational part of the protagonist’s backstory which are left to be a c-tier background element of the narrative and are, in fact, far more horrifying than anything else the book has to offer. 

Now, I knew the story was going to be a bit silly when the first terror is a mascot-like frogman ripped from someone’s dreams, but the terrors becoming an anime power boost transformation after being revealed to be the victims of the more evil government’s extraction of resources from them felt like such a let down to me. 

I also know there’s a place for goofy and silly within both the Cyberpunk and Horror genres, admittedly they are both replete with silly ideas that when handled correctly can feel awesome or terrifying… it’s just that the twist of the monsters being victims the whole time would have been fine without them having to turn into absurd crab armour to wrap around the hero’s team in their moment of final conflict against the governing forces.  

It was fun, like a cheesy Hollywood adaptation of a darker source text would be.Maybe the reason I disliked the ending so much was that it came too out of left field. I saw the monsters actually being the victims coming from a good distance away, for several issues… and then BAM the moment of reconciliation happens where our protagonist learns the truth and then he’s just WEARING the entity he was just talking to like a cheap tokusatsu monster costume with a human head sticking out of it. It feels like the actions of characters from another story suddenly shoehorned in at the end of this one.

Either way, in the end, it’ll get me store credit at the shop I frequent, insight into what makes a twist fall apart in my eyes, and experience making some art and content, so it’s not all bad.