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What Do Terminator, Hulk, Harlan Ellison, and
the Outer Limits have in common?
Comic Book
Features
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Well, what do the Terminator,
Hulk, Harlan
Ellison, and the
Outer
Limits all have in common? Let's travel back in time and go
forward. First, let's visit the Outer Limits back in the early
1960's when
Harlan
Ellison wrote two classic episodes of the Outer Limits titled,
"Soldier" and "Demon with a Glass Hand". Both episodes have
been said to have given James Cameron his idea for Terminator.
According to E! Online, Terminator production company, Hemdale, and
distributor, Orion Pictures, "gave veteran fantasy writer Harlan
Ellison an 'acknowledgement to the works of' credit on The
Terminator and a cash settlement lest he sue for plagiarism of two
episodes he wrote.
Outer Limits the Soldier Meets the Hulk
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Hulk 286 click for larger image

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The Soldier story in particular seems to have
been closest to the Terminator theme. A soldier from the future
played by
Michael Ansara goes back to the past only to die at the hand of
another soldier from the future. In Ellison's Outer Limits story the
soldier is intent on one thing and one thing only, to kill the
enemy. His helmet gives him battle instructions. He uses a
laser gun that never needs re-loading. He speaks a futuristic broken
type of English.
These characteristics were mirrored in the 1983
issue of The Incredible Hulk #286, which also featured a future
soldier coming to the past. Coincidentally the actor Michael Ansara
also played Kang on Star Trek, and the soldier in the Hulk story
worshipped Marvel
Comics Kang.
The story in the comic
follows like this. It's the 41st Century. War rages everywhere.
Everyone is the enemy.
In the Outer Limits story,
war was waged by two parties. Each party fought for his
government. The Soldier was loyal to the state; he put it
something to the effect, "The state is all, all is the state."
The soldier in the comic is
struck by enemy rifle fire and lightning from a gamma
storm sends him back to the past, into the laboratory of Bruce
Banner, who at this time controls the power of the Hulk while
maintaining his own intellect and personality. Through another
coincidence involving a gamma storm the Hulk and the soldier are
sent to the 41st century. It's at this point the story really
becomes it's own and starts to separate itself from the original
Outer Limits episode. The Hulk discovers that Kang the Conqueror
is dead, but his robotic statue continues to command war for his
people. The Hulk destroys the statue and in turn sees the
soldier of the future free from his commands to kill, but his
enemies fire upon him killing the soldier. The Hulk disappears
back into his present time. |
Now it's obvious from reading
this story the writers were influenced heavily by Harlan Ellison's
story. In fact, they used most of his setup. It differs only in that
the comic writer Bill Mantlo put a Marvel Comics twist on it. Don't
get me wrong, I'm not knocking him or the story. There really isn't
anything new under the sun after all. In fact, using great stories
from the past to create new exciting versions is a great strategy
for creating great entertaining comic book reading.
Interesting how everything is
connected in some way or another isn't it? We now return control of
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If you'd like to watch the Outer
Limits episodes here are a couple of links from youtube,
Demon With A Glass Hand, and the
Soldier. |