 |
The Snake Plissken Chronicles
"A Little Class"
Snake Plissken Chronicles #3 (CrossGen)
Writer: William O'Neill
Pencils: Tone Rodriguez
Inks: Kim Werestiuk
Colors: Chris Blythe
Letters: Dreamer Design and Robin Spehar
Cover B: Tone Rodriguez and Travis Smith
November 2003 |
Snake, Captain Ron and Jackie O.
escape the Dead President’s Casino in President Kennedy’s car.
Story Summary
Snake floors the accelerator of the JFK
assassination Continental and races into the cargo elevator of
the casino to escape Marrs. Then he races through the second
floor of the casino and crashes through a window and into the
Atlantic City boardwalk. Chased by the AC police, Snake is aided
by Ron in the Humvee, but a USPF helicopter soon intervenes and
disables the Hummer. Snake circles back and "Jackie" helps Ron
aboard the car. The helicopter pilot tries to blow up the
speeding vehicle, but smashes into a pedestrian bridge instead,
allowing our anti-heroes to escape.
Meanwhile, Marrs is taken to meet the owner
of the Dead Presidents Casino, who is sure he must know who
stole the Continental. Marrs tries to play it cool and says maybe they can
still retrieve it.
The Continental runs out of gas and Snake
swipes a gas card from a bus driver to refuel it a gas station,
blowing up the bus in the process. That's Snake for ya.
Snake, Ron, and "Jackie" arrive at Ron's
boat and load the Continental onto it...just as Big Red returns
and shoots Ron.
CONTINUED IN SNAKE PLISSKEN CHRONICLES #4
Didja Know?
Snake Plissken Chronicles
was a 4-issue comic book mini-series published by CrossGen in
2003. I borrowed the title of the series to use as the overall
title of the Snake Plissken stories studied here on PopApostle.
The issues of this series do not have published individual
titles assigned to them. I assigned the title
"A Little Class" based on a line of dialog in the issue.
Characters appearing in this
issue
Snake Plissken
Marrs
Phobos
Deimos
"Jackie"
Captain Ron Hill
Slim Timm
Big Red
Didja Notice?
As he did in "Garden State", Marrs mocks Snake's name, this
time calling him Cobra Francisco.
On page 6, Snake drives the Continental through the casino
and crashes through a second story window, to head for the
boardwalk. The Atlantic City Boardwalk was the first
boardwalk in the United States, opening on June 26, 1870.
On page 7, the two Atlantic City
police officers who shoot at Snake during his escape towards
the boardwalk are possibly intended to be twins, as they
both appear to have the last name Sparks on their name
badges. One of them is T. Sparks. (According to the "Test
Your Power of Pop Observation" article in
Snake Plissken Chronicles #4, T. Sparks is the
name of an actual Atlantic City police officer the creators
met at a signing there the previous year.)
On page 8, Snake and the police drive past DJ's Comics on
the boardwalk. As far as I can tell, this is a fictitious
comic book store for Atlantic City, though there is such a
business in Wallingford, CT. In the windows of the comic
book store are taped several ads for what appears to be
Violent Messiahs, a comic book series by the writer and
artist of
Snake Plissken Chronicles,
William O'Neill and Tone Rodriguez, with Joshua Dysart.
On page 11, panel 6, a gunshot at the Continental from the
pursuing helicopter enters the back of the JFK mannequin's
head and exits through the front of its face, taking the
left eye with it. This is similar to the second bullet that
fatally injured President Kennedy, though it exited his
skull higher on the forehead, not near/through the eye
socket.
On page 13, there appears to be a store called Spam on the
boardwalk.
| Panel 7 of page 13,
showing "Jackie" helping Ron aboard the fleeing Continental
is nearly identical to a shot from the Zapruder film of the
JFK assassination of Jackie Kennedy and Secret Service Agent
Clint Hill (ironically, Ron's last name in the comic is also
Hill). |
 |
 |
On page 14, "Jackie" remarks on how she had been thinking of
calling in sick, staying in bed, and watching Love Story.
Love Story is a 1970 romantic drama film.
On page 15, we see a gigantic statue of an elephant called
Lucy, built in 1881 and now owned by Slim Timm.
Lucy the Elephant is a real world piece of novelty
architecture built in 1881 by James V. Lafferty in Margate
City, New Jersey to help attract tourists and sell real
estate; it still exists there as a tourist attraction today.
On page 16, Slim Timm tells Marrs that his associates in
Duck Town would be impressed. Ducktown is an historically
Italian-American district of Atlantic City, with connections
to the Mafia in the past.
When Marrs truthfully tells Slim Timm that the Continental
was stolen by Snake Plissken, Timm retorts, "Do you take me
for a fool? Everybody knows Snake Plissken is dead."
On page 17, Snake and his reluctant allies stop for gas at
Goldie's Gas. This appears to be a fictitious establishment.
(According to the "Test Your Power of
Pop Observation" article in
Snake Plissken Chronicles #4, the station is
named after Kurt Russell's longtime girlfriend/partner
Goldie Hawn.)
A water tower with a smiley face painted on it is seen in
the background, suggesting Snake and friends may be in
Margate,
near the former site of Lucy the Elephant before it was
taken as part of Slim Timm's collection (the real Margate
has just such a water tower near the Lucy site).
After Snake swipes a gas card from a bus driver to fill the
Continental, he is held at gunpoint by a pack of senior
citizens on the bus led by an old woman claiming to be the
headmaster of Senior Citizens for an Armed America, Troop
357. This is a fictitious organization, although probably
not too far from reality.
Back to
Snake Plissken Chronicles Episode Studies
