Robert Kirkman & Terminal Team Break Down New Image Comics Superhero Series, Including How Far Ahead They Are [Exclusive]

Robert Kirkman, Joe Casey, Andy Kubert, David Finch, and Arthur Adams are no strangers to superheroes. Between the five of them, some truly iconic characters and stories have been told in the genre, and starting this summer, Image Comics will deliver their next all-new epic with a brand new series, titled Terminal. Described as being perfect for fans of the X-Men (a property that all these creatives know well), it marks the first superhero series for Kirkman since the conclusion of Invincible back in 2018.

The official description for Terminal reveals that the series follows “a secret war being waged across the world by two violent forces with superhuman abilities who blur the lines between good and evil.” Central to it all, though, is Marilyn Howe’s search for her missing sister, which puts her in the center of this secret conflict, and the revelation that “the power to save the world comes from unlocking your genetic code and giving up everything you thought you knew about yourself…if you survive the experience.” Speaking with ComicBook in an exclusive interview ahead of the final order cutoff date for the book (this Monday, for those eager to pre-order), we spoke to the core team about their plans for the series, how much of it is already planned, and how it might live in another medium.

Terminal Debuts This July From Image Comics

“That is correct,” Kirkman says when we ask him to clarify if the team really has completed 18 issues of the series, adding in jest: “What are we, five years in? Four years in?”

Kirkman went on to reveal that the plans are in place for the series to remain about a year ahead of the publishing schedule, giving them room to experiment with the release cadence of the comic as stories are told, including special events that may see more than one issue debuting every month.

Regarding the comparison to Invincible and X-Men, Kirkman was quick to note how correct that was as a baseline, revealing that the series shares Invincible’s DNA for not pulling any punches with regard to the violence in a superhero world.

“When it’s time for there to be violence, it is very startling and somewhat in your face,” Kirkman said. “We also have a lot of horror elements. There are some monster characters and cool stuff like that that I think kind of separate us from that core X-Men concept. But we’re kind of keeping the flavor of those 90s comics, but doing something that’s very new and very different, and that will become apparent.”

Kirkman also confirmed that superstar artist Andy Kubert will be the main artist on the first five issues of the series, but that rotations between all the artists they’ve lined up will become a regular thing, and something that fans will come to feel as an event when they learn their favorite artist is returning in the next issue.

“After my last exclusive contract at DC, I did want to go do something creator-owned,” Kubert revealed. “And when this project came up, when Robert called me and explained to me what he wanted to do first, it was his wit and charm that got me on board…He told me over the phone what everything was that he wanted to do, the whole concept, sent me the scripts. I went through the scripts and I was like, what am I going to do with this? But that’s with every project I start, and I’m like, this is going to be a lot. And it was a lot, but it’s a lot of fun too. It’s a blast to do.”

Kirkman and Casey then broke down how they collaborate on the title, with Kirkman saying he’s a “bit more manic and zany” while Casey “has a good handle on structure,” noting: “I feel like we complement each other in that way.”

“I think that we know each other’s work fairly well, and we know what each other brings to the table,” Casey added. “I sort of depend on him in a way to have these left-field, wacky ideas that are really exciting, and then we figure out a way to make them work. Then I try to apply some structure to them, but then we go back to and work off that. It’s always a back and forth on what’s going to make for the best book.”

Casey added that the book has struck a distinct tonal balance between how the two of them work, noting that if either of them had been working on it alone, then it wouldn’t be the same book at all.

“Hopefully, as we go on, we keep that balance in mind because really, between that and the level of art involved, that’s the tone of the book. That’s the voice of the book.”

Kirkman further confirmed that as the “big, complex team book” of Terminal continues to develop, the protagonists of each story arc and issue will shift. “There will be issues that focus on single characters,” Kirkman said. “There will be arcs that have completely different main characters and completely different focuses, and it’ll all come together.”

Being so far ahead with the series, Kirkman further noted that the team has a “vague sense” of where the story is going for the entire series, but noted that they still have to figure out the structure of how the ending will come together. “This is a book that we both see going for a good long time,” Kirkman said. “So we have plenty of time to figure out how this thing ends.”

Given that this new series is coming from Robert Kirkman, and Invincible remains one of the biggest shows on Prime Video, fans may already be wondering when Terminal might make the leap to TV or film, even before the comic debuts; Kirkman has thought about it too.

“I think that this would work really, really well in animation,” he added. “I think that, with the uniqueness of our characters and some of the inhuman nature of the designs of some of them. I think that would be pretty interesting. But I could also see a really cool live-action adaptation as well. So I don’t know, we’ll just have to see where things go.”

Terminal #1 will debut in comic shops on July 22, 2026.