TERRARISTS
(Earth-93821)

Membership: Ford Drake, Dominique, Bluebeard, Bobbi

Purpose: To save the Earth from total ecological collapse

Aliases: None

Affiliations: Mother Earth (as a corporeal entity);
    formerly the Federal Bureau of the Environment

Enemies: The Consortium (Morgan Rand, Broderick Rayner, "Papa" Miller who is Dominque's Father), McKenzie and the Super Dudes

Base of Operations: A nuclear fallout shelter filled with artistic treasures located under the Hudson docks in New Jersey

First Appearance: Terrarists#1 (1993)

Powers/Abilities: 
    Ford Drake possesses flight and super strength, is bulletproof, and can survive a limited time in space.
    Dominique possesses flight and super strength, has super speed, and knows Savate.
    Bluebeard can summon lightning bolts, has super strength (is the strongest among them), and is bulletproof.
    Bobbi can breathe fire and is bulletproof.

    Their powers are never made clear, so it's possible Dominique is also bulletproof, or Ford also has super speed, etc.
    Explicitly Ford/Dominique can fly and the others can't; and Bluebeard can summon lightning, and Bobbi can breathe fire, and the others can't.

History: (Terrarists I#1 (fb) - BTS) - Earth was dying from pollution, global warming and lack of ozone, and was two years away from total ecological collapse. At least 25 indidivuals had been saved from certain death and empowered by the Earth itself with "the Terran directive." They had to periodically plunge thir hands into soil to recharge their powers (though this doesn't ever actually come up). After they were revealed to the general public, the government recruited them, allegedly to enforce international environmental regulations and exact vengeance against polluters.

(Terrarists I#1 (fb)) - Bobbi was a party girl who was "drinking and screwing her way to an early death" when she took some unidentified drugs out in the woods with other hippie types. She had a mystic experience but almost died of an overdose and was empowered by the Terran directive.

(Terrarists I#1 (fb)) - Bluebeard was a mercenary working in the Amazon who was blown to bits. Natives found him and placed him, nearly dead, in their "sacred bower" where the herbs and plants came alive, healed him and gave him the Terran directive.

(Terrarists I#2 (fb)) - Ford Drake was piloting a "starbird" stealth fighter when it got caught in a freak electrical storm and crashed; but he heard a voice saying "No, I have got work for you to do, I have need of champions" and was given the Terran directive a split second before brain death.

(Terrarists I#3 (fb)) - Dominique was a typical socialite, "surrounded by a million boring men, having one failed affair after another" when she met Pascal, a fellow woman socialite. She and Pascal spent many happy years together, doing things like pheasant hunting, until Pascal died of leukemia. Dominique committed suicide by leaping off the top of a skyscraper but heard a voice saying she was needed and received the Terran directive, which allowed her to fly and survive.

(Terrarists I#1) - After a raid on a corporate mine project in Panama, the group hacked in and discovered their raids were selected by the government to distract the populace while "Project Exodus" proceeded. The raids seemed like taking action but actually minimized damage to global corporations. They flew to the UN building to confront their boss Morgan Rand, head of the Federal Bureau of the Environment. They first had a brief confrontation with "McKenzie and the Super Dudes," others empowered by the Terran Directive but more closely aligned with the government, who all wore red and had similar powers. Morgan Rand told them that "with the Earth spewing out super heroes, well, the obvious move was to absorb you all into a government agency and then misdirect you where you could do no harm." He revoked their license and called them common criminals and terrorists, and they embraced their new status as "Terrarists."

(Terrarists I#2) - Earth caused a skull icon to appear in Yosemite national park by spontaneously knocking trees down, but Morgan Rand called it "a gentle rebuke." The Terrarists were individually assaulted by citizens who believed Rand that they were actually criminals. More hacking revealed that a program to ship toxic waste off Earth in shuttles was sending up more waste than was being delivered, and this led to another confrontation with the Super Dudes. Ford managed to get aboard the shuttle after it launched, and he broke in to discover a veritable Noah's Ark of plants and animals.

(Terrarists I#3) - Two months later, Manhattan has been overrun by a "bio-active hotspot" and covered in plant/mold material called "the Green." People who stayed too long in the Green mutated and became "bestial and strange." After being attacked by crazed civilians, the Terrarists headed to their hideout to discover an entity calling itself Earth waiting for them, appearing very much like a traditional Grim Reaper. The entity Earth told them that the Consortium planned on wiping out all life on Earth and starting over on Mars: This was the true Project Exodus. Earth wouldn't let that happen, and the Green was the first step in wiping out humanity before the Consortium could make the planet completely uninhabitable for all forms of life.

    Earth gave the Terrarists only a short time to stop Project Exodus. They confronted Dominique's father, who owned the company behind the shuttles and was part of the Consortium. The Consortium revealed that they planned to leave Earth alone to die slowly and just go off to Mars, but when the entity Earth (as the Grim Reaper) confronted them the previous year, they changed plans because "Earth has proven to be conscious, resourceful, and revengeful... who knows what she might do to those who have most injured her?" They planned to send all the toxic waste they hauled into space hurtling back down at high velocity to end all life and kill this incarnation of Earth. They offered the Terrarists places on Mars but the heroes turned them down, except for Dominique, who ran to her father while the others were trapped in a room covered in tungsten steel and "lead-sheathed hard radiation" that cut them off from their connection to the Earth.

(Terrarists I#4) - Morgan Rand taunted the trapped Terrarists explaining that they detonated two nukes high above America 46 minutes before to cause a widespread electromagnetic pulse. Morgan further revealed that he had cancer and wasn't leaving for Mars, so he was waiting six hours to send the toxic waste bombardment. Dom came back to free them, and they confronted more Super Dudes on the way to Morgan's base, a converted 747 flying command post from the Cold War. Dom and Bobbi were hit by a missile and apparently died, while Ford threw Bluebeard (willingly) to intercept another missile. Only Ford was left to grab the antenna trailing the 747 and break it before the command to launch the toxic waste could be sent. Rand then committed suicide in the plane.

(Terrarists I#4) - <Six months later> - Ford stood alone on Long Island beach and reflected on how things were returning to normal: the Earth stopped attacking, the EMP effect subsided, the toxic barges were sent into deep space, and things were still critical with the environment but getting better. Earth had saved the other Terrarists from death one last time, and they joined Ford on the beach, vowing to make sure people everywhere respected the Earth and it never came this close again.

    Ford also wondered about the 500 industrialists already living on Mars, who hadn't communicated at all, but who must know by now that the Earth had survived. The Terrarists vowed revenge one day...

Comments: Created by Pat Mills, Tony Skinner, and John Erasmus.

    Their home base is under the Hudson docks in New Jersey in an absurdly large nuclear fallout shelter owned by Dom's father. It's some kind of survivalist shelter filled with all kinds of rare paintings and sculptures, and also state-of-the-art computer systems. They thought Dom's father didn't know they lived there but it's later revealed that he totally did.

    They mentioned that Dom explicitly didn't take her father's last name, Miller. They don't ever mention what her mother's last name that she DID take was, but the comic wants to make it clear her last name is NOT Miller, so infinity minus 1 choices there.

    Their base has a "total comm interface system" that gave them access to the "world picture." Which is apparently like the internet but also you hack into every company's "electronic mailboxing." You've got to love early 90s media that tried to describe the nascent internet.

    I love me some painted artwork comics, but be warned that the art by John Earsmus is a bit rough, if you can't tell by the images provided. The backgrounds look good, but most of the faces and poses are pretty stiff and unnatural looking. The characters look cartoonish at times.

    Pretty sure the goofiest scene in the series is this image of Ford using Bobbi as a flamethrower. She can breathe fire all on her own, you don't need to hold her like a bazooka!

    I think my favorite quote from the series is Morgan Rand discussing how they knew all along about the incarnation of Earth as the Grim Reaper. "Talking planets don't impress us in the slightest!" Really? If the Earth appeared to me as a Grim Reaper I would be like super impressed. I guess we're just very different people, Morgan.

    This profile was completed 06/07/2026, but its publication was delayed as it was intended for the Appendix 25th anniversary 's celebratory event to represent the characters and stories of the Terrarists.

Profile by caliban.

CLARIFICATIONS:
The Terrarists have no known connections to:

McKenzie and the Super Dudes


     Never given an explicit name in the comic, they were referred to as "the Super Dudes" by a security guard friendly to them, and also called "the Red Dudes" and just "the Dudes" later in the series.

     Dom (who is French) calls one (or more, not clear) of them "Garcon Rouge" (boy in red, or something like that).

     We never see more than 4 of them together, so there may be only four.

     They each seem to have the same powers of flight and shooting energy beams out of their eyes, mouth, AND hands (weird).

     Their uniforms completely cover their eyes, but apparently they can still see just fine.

     Why Earth empowered them to all have the same powers and why they are such jerks is never made clear.

-- Terrarists#1 (2-4



The Consortium


     Consisting of Broderick Rayner (left), Dominque's Father (Papa) Miller (center), and Morgan Rand (right), along with other unseen fat cat industrialists.

     Dom's father and some others claim descent from the founding fathers.

     They have a plan (Project Exodus) to leave Earth for Mars and then hasten Earth's environmental collapse with toxic waste bombardment so that the vengeful spirit of the Earth doesn't later mess with their colony on Mars.

-- Terrarists#1

Note: Morgan Rand is in all 4, the other members and seeing them as a group is only in #3-4.
     Though Dom's Dad is mentioned in every issue, but only shows up in #3 physically.


 



Mother Earth

     Apparently a physical entity that's the actual incarnation of the Earth itself, it's pretty unusual to depict Gaea/Mother Earth as a Grim Reaper.

     Though the Terrarists misgender her as male twice (and are not corrected by Earth), in the epilogue she calls herself a "young maiden". Perhaps Earth is just all the genders at once.

     She appeared to warn the Consortium the year before the main story about the ongoing environmental damage.

     After being ignored, she empowered people about to die with the "Terran Directive" that saved them and gave them super powers.

     Apparently though she only gave interesting powers to four people, our heroes, and everyone else got generic flight/strength/shoot energy powers.

     She later unleashed the Green, a kind of apocalyptic fungal infection with the intent of wiping out humanity. She also can apparently wipe out humanity in some totally different way instantly, but chose not to.

     She can appear and disappear anywhere on Earth.

     She can also make trees spontaneously fall in forests to create gothy skull icons, which is a power I would use a lot more than she does.

-- Terrarists#1 - BTS, 3 (1-2 - BTS, 3-4



Images: (without ads)
Terrarists#1 back cover (main)
Terrarists#2 p3, pan1 (forest skull)
Terrarists#1 p22, pan1 (Their enormous base)
Terrarists#2 p18, pan2-3 (Using Bobbi as a flamethrower)
Terrarists#2 p17, pan1 (McKenzie and the Super Dudes)
Terrarists#3 p25, pan4 (The Consortium)
Terrarists#3 p16, pan1 (Mother Earth)

Appearances:
Terrarists#1 (August, 1993) - Pat Mills and Tony Skinner (writers), John Erasmus (artist), Tom Daning and David Wohl (editors)
Terrarists#2 (December, 1993) - Pat Mills and Tony Skinner (writers), John Erasmus (artist), Tom Daning (editor)
Terrarists#3 (January, 1994) - Pat Mills and Tony Skinner (writers), John Erasmus (artist), Tom Daning (editor)
Terrarists#4 (February, 1994) - Pat Mills and Tony Skinner (writers), John Erasmus (artist), Tom Daning (editor)

First Posted: 09/11/2026
Last updated: 06/19/2026

Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.

Non-Marvel Copyright info
All other characters mentioned or pictured are ™  and © 1941-2099 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved. If you like this stuff, you should check out the real thing!
Please visit The Marvel Official Site at: http://www.marvel.com

Special Thanks to www.g-mart.com for hosting the Appendix, Master List, etc.!

Back to Characters