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The Snake Plissken Chronicles
"Captain Ron"
Snake Plissken Chronicles #2 (CrossGen)
Writer: William O'Neill
Pencils: Tone Rodriguez
Inks: Digital Chameleon
Colors: Chris Blythe
Letters: Dreamer Design and Robin Spehar
Cover B: Travis Smith
September 2003 |
Caged and bound, Snake is sent
plunging to the bottom of the Atlantic
Ocean.
Story Summary
Picking up from last issue, Snake is
sinking to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, bound and caged in
a crab pot. After slicing through the
ropes binding his hands against the bars of the crab cage, Snake
uses the floating buoy attached to the crab pot to help him
force open the cage door. Escaping the cage, he rises to the
surface and gasps in the air. He begins swimming towards shore,
knowing he won't be able to make it before hypothermia sets in.
But he is found by a fisherman, Captain Ron Hill, who pulls him
aboard.
Snake wants revenge against Marrs, deciding
he will steal the assassination car before Marrs can to
humiliate him, then kill him. Snake has a plan to use a boat for
the theft and asks Ron to join him for half the stake, but Ron
decides a life of crime is not for him at his advanced age.
Snake seems to be on the verge of killing Ron in order to take
his boat, when the local crime boss, Big Red, makes an
appearance, demanding protection money from Ron. Big Red
recognizes Snake and orders one of his men to kill him, but
Snake turns the tables and kills Big Red's men before the man
himself manages to get away.
Realizing Big Red is not going to leave him
alone, Ron agrees to Snake's heist plan and they head to the
seaside Dead President's Casino in the fishing boat in the
middle of the night, with the plan of stealing the car and
loading it onto the boat. Snake uses air vents in the building to
gain entrance to the car's showroom and he successfully hot
wires it, planning to drive it out to the boat. Just then a
hostess for the attraction dressed as Jackie Kennedy discovers him there. And so does
Marrs and a couple of his men, arriving to carry out their own
heist of the vehicle.
CONTINUED IN SNAKE PLISSKEN CHRONICLES #3
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 "Captain
Ron" for the fisherman who becomes Snake's ally in this
issue.
Characters appearing in this
issue
Marrs
Snake Plissken
Captain Ron Hill
Big Red
Wilhelm
Petrov
"Jackie Kennedy" (hostess, real name unknown)
Didja Notice?
As Snake plunges into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean,
Marrs, up on the boat, says, "So long, Plissken. Say hello
to Captain Nemo for me." Captain Nemo
is the eponymous antihero and captain of the scientific
wonder submarine Nautillus of the Jules Verne
novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870)
and The Mysterious Island (1874).
Apparently Snake is known as "...the greatest escape artist
ever...he can get out of anything, anytime."
After slicing through the ropes binding his hands against
the bars of the crab cage (pot), Snake uses the floating
buoy attached to the crab pot to help him force open the
cage door. Crab pots are normally attached to a buoy by a
long tether in order to mark the location of the trap for
later retrieval (although you'd think in this case Marrs
would have disconnected the buoy so that no one would find
Snake's body; in fact, exactly that happens!).
The sea captain who rescues Snake from the water is named
Captain Ron Hill. Possibly the "Captain Ron" part of the
name is based on the character of Captain Ron Rico played by
Kurt Russell in the 1992 film Captain Ron. The
"Hill" part of the name here was inspired by the co-producer
of both
Escape from New York
and Escape from L.A., Debra Hill. Additionally, his
boat here is named Darkstar, after the spaceship
Dark Star from John Carpenter's 1974 film of the
same name (in Captain Ron, the boat he pilots is
called the Wanderer). According to the "Test Your
Power of Pop Observation" article in
Snake Plissken Chronicles #4, the boat itself
is based on the one in Jaws (Quint's boat, the
Orca).
Ron tells Snake that everything the Armenian called Big Red
knows about America he learned from Saturday Night Fever.
Saturday Night Fever
is a 1977 film about a young man who likes to spend his
weekends disco dancing. The suit Big Red wears is very
similar to that worn by John Travolta in the film.
When Big Red asks who Snake is, Ron says he's just a fare
looking for a ride to Wildwood.
Wildwood is a small seaside city in New Jersey.
As Snake kills his henchmen, Big Red tells his driver, "Get
me out of this disco inferno!" "Disco Inferno" is a 1976
song by the Trammps that was part of the soundtrack of
Saturday Night Fever.
Big Red's car appears to be a
Cadillac.
It has a personalized license plate reading BIG RED.
Ron tells Snake he would like to go to Rio with his share of
the heist money. This is a reference to
Rio de
Janeiro, a popular resort city in Brazil.
The hostess who discovers Snake in the JFK car is dressed as
Jackie Kennedy, in just the manner she was on the day of her
husband's assassination.
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Snake Plissken Chronicles Episode Studies
