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The Snake Plissken Chronicles
"Public Enemy No. 1"
Escape from New York #1 (BOOM Studios)
Writer: Christopher Sebela
Artist: Diego Barreto
Colorist: Marissa Louise
Letterer: Ed Dukeshire
Cover A: Declan Shalvey
December 2014 |
Humiliated by playing the wrong tape
for the Hartford Summit, the U.S. President revokes Snake's hard-won pardon
and sends the USPF after him again.
Story Summary
Picking up where
Escape from New York
left off, the humiliated
President,
after playing the wrong audio tape for the Hartford
Summit, supplied to him by Snake Plissken, revokes Snake's
presidential pardon and orders Hauk to get after him. But Snake
is already ahead of the USPF, stealing a police Jeep and then
commandeering a copter. USPF copters are sent after him and,
after an aerial battle with air-to-air missiles, Snake is
brought down in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. Snake makes his
way out of the forest and hitches a ride in a van with a group
of four young Satanists, three men and a woman, heading for the
Free Republic of Florida.
Snake falls asleep in the van, waking up to find the gang
robbing a gas station after having killed the clerk. Angry, he
knocks out the men and steals a pick-up to escape the scene with
the young woman, Jayne, who was not directly involved with the
hit. After escaping an investigating USPF helicopter, the two
arrive at the border of Florida, where Jayne takes her leave of
Snake, more interested in going back to her old, quiet life
after her adventure. Snake wants to continue into Florida, where
the USPF will have a difficult time touching him, but he must
pass through the Crucible to prove his worthiness before the
state will
let him as a new citizen. Flaunting the rules of the Crucible,
Snake easily slaughters his way through the obstacles.
Snake is passed into Florida, but must accept a job there to
become a citizen. Snake disagrees and head-butts the job
assignment officer, leading to the F.R.F. soldiers declaring him
non-compliant, punishable by execution. He is then greeted by
the Twins, Romulus and Remus, who run Florida and who promise to
kill him.
CONTINUED IN ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK #2
Notes from the Snake Plissken chronology
This issue opens as the President begins his televised
appearance to the Hartford Summit as seen at the end of
Escape from New York
and continues immediately from there,
on the night of October 24, 1997 (as revealed in the
novelization of the film) and then follows Snake into the 25th.
This would be Friday and Saturday according to the calendar.
Characters appearing or mentioned in this issue
President Harker
Snake Plissken
Commissioner
Hauk
USPF sergeant (unnamed)
Anton
Aleister
Jayne
Kenneth
Joe (gas station clerk, deceased)
The Twins (Romulus and Remus)
Didja Know?
The issues of this series do not have published individual
titles assigned to them. I assigned the title
"Public Enemy No. 1" to this issue
from a line of dialog spoken by Hauk about Snake in this issue.
While this issue begins during the last 45 seconds of the events
of
Escape from New York,
the rest of the issue and the
comic book series itself are not directly part of that
story, so the series title seems a bit of a misnomer. Couldn't
BOOM Studios have borrowed the title of the 2003 Crossgen comic
book mini-series The Chronicles of Snake Plissken? I
guess they figured the series would get more attention having
the same name as the cult film.
The snake image on the inside front cover of this issue
(and subsequent issues) is the famous "Join, or Die"
political cartoon woodcut by Benjamin Franklin,
published in his Pennsylvania Gazette newspaper
on May 9, 1754 (representing his opinion on the
disunited American colonies' need to join together with Great
Britain in the French and Indian War of 1754–1763). The
eight segments and accompanying initials represent the
disunited British colonies of New England, New York, New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Vermont, North
Carolina, and South Carolina. |
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Segmented snake on inside front cover |
"Join, or Die" political cartoon by
Benjamin Franklin |
Didja Notice?
Page 1 of this issue essentially retells the last 45 seconds of
Escape from New York,
with the President's failed audio presentation and Snake
destroying the real tape.
The artist depicts Liberty Island Security Control very close to
what was seen in
Escape from New York,
accepting some very moderate artistic license.
Notice that Snake still wears the countdown timer on his left
wrist throughout most of this issue, but we saw when he went
to speak to the President before his speech at the end of
Escape from New York
that he had removed it. On the other hand, he is no longer
wearing the makeshift bandage on his right leg that he was
still wearing at that time.
Snake was pretty exhausted by the end of
Escape from New York
(as he even admits to Hauk in their exchange of "You going to
kill me now, Snake?" "I'm too tired. Maybe later."), yet he runs
around as if full of energy (and uninjured!) throughout this
issue.
On page 2, panel 1, the President's cufflink is imprinted with
what appears to be the official seal of the President of the
United States.
On page 2, upon realizing that Snake has handed over the
wrong cassette tape, the President tells Hauk to go
after him and that he's revoking Snake's pardon. When
Hauk challenges that that's "kind of against the spirit
of the rules", the President responds, "It's not wrong
if the President does it." The President's response is a
paraphrasing of a quote from U.S. President Richard
Nixon in a televised interview he did with David Frost: |
|
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Frost: Would you say that there
are certain situations - and the Huston Plan was one of
them - where the president can decide that it's in the
best interests of the nation, and do something illegal?
Nixon: Well, when the president does
it, that means it is not illegal. |
The President then goes on to ask Hauk, "Who's the President,
Hauk? Who's A-Number-One?" He is appropriating the phrase the
Duke of New York made him repeat while he was held captive,
"You are the Duke of New York. You are A-Number One."
On page 3, Snake jumps onto a police helicopter as it is taking
off and, yanking open the pilot's door, grabs him and says, "Get
out. Now." This is probably a callback to a scene in
Terminator 2: Judgment Day, in
which, after oozing into a police helicopter, the T-1000
Terminator tells the pilot, "Get out."
Snake's copter is shot down and he crashes into the Pine
Barrens. The
Pine Barrens is a large, thickly-forested area of New Jersey,
sparsely inhabited.
Escaping the copter crash, Snake eventually emerges from the
forest on a highway and thumbs a ride from a passing female
motorist. It seems unlikely that your average woman driving
alone would stop to pick up a scruffy, menacing-looking guy like
Snake on the side of the road!
On page 8, the car the woman is driving looks to be a
Honda Civic
of the 1979–1983 model.
The television news broadcast on page 8 mentions recent border
skirmishes between the USPF and F.R.F. We learn later in the
story that F.R.F. stands for "Free Republic of Florida".
The waitress behind the counter at the diner Snake goes into
seems to recognize him and gives him a hamburger on the house
and adds, "Y'know, I heard you were dead."
On page 9, Snake gets a ride in a van with a group of young
Satanists named
Aleister,
Anton, Jayne, and Kenneth. Their names are borrowed by
the writer from those of famous occultists Aleister Crowley
(occultist and ceremonial magician), Anton LeVey (founder of the
Church of Satan), Jayne Mansfield (a well-known actress), and
Kenneth Anger (an underground filmmaker).
Aleister wears a hat with the triangular symbol of the
All-Seeing Eye of God on it.
On page 10, Jayne recognizes Snake and says, "I heard you was
dead." Snake responds, "I get that a lot."
On page 10, Aleister opens his shirt to display a pentacle
tattoo on his chest, a pentagram (five-pointed star)
circumscribed by a circle. This symbol has been used in
religious and magical rituals since ancient times and is still
in use by various neopagan religions. Christian religions in
recent centuries tend to associate it with Satanism.
Realizing that Snake is unaware that Florida seceded from the
United States 6 years ago, Jayne asks him, "Where you been,
Snake?" and he responds simply, "Busy." The novelization of
Escape from New York
reveals that the USPF had been trying to capture Snake for
various crimes for the past 5 years. So what was he doing that
earlier 6th year? Maybe he was still in the Army at that time,
which might narrow down when the Leningrad mission took place
(1991?).
Snake looks at a map of the United States on page 10.
There are X's through the state of Florida and over the
area of Manhattan Island (the prison he just brought the
President out of). But there are also X's over the
states of Washington, North Carolina, Nebraska,
Oklahoma, and Missouri. What's the story with those
states? |
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Aleister says that anything goes in Florida, a "modern day Sodom
and Gomorrah." The two cities of Sodom and
Gomorrah are mentioned in both the Bible and Torah
as being cities of sin that were judged and consumed by fire and
brimstone sent by God as punishment.
On page 13, one of the Satanist men (I can't tell which one,
they all three look the same!) is wearing a shirt with the
Motörhead image of Snaggletooth on it.
Motörhead was a British heavy metal band active from 1975-2015.
Snaggletooth (or sometimes War Pig) is the name of the fanged
demon face that serves as the band's symbol.
On page 17, Jayne says the Twins made a deal with Cuba to
acquire the nuclear missiles left behind there after the missile
crisis. This refers to the Cuban Missile Crisis of October
16–28, 1962, when the Soviet Union attempted to place nuclear
missiles in Cuba, threatening U.S. security. However, the
treaty that ended the crisis required the Soviets to remove all
their missiles from Cuba and is generally believed to have been
successful, leaving no missiles behind.
The sign welcoming Snake and Jayne as they drive across
the state border into South Carolina is very similar to
actual welcome road signs used by the state currently.
(Sign photo by Jim Burke at
Flickr.) |
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On page 18, Snake appears to have finally removed the countdown
timer from his left wrist. (However, it inexplicably returns
next issue at
the beginning of "Freedom Isn't Free"!)
On page 18, part of the wall surrounding the Crucible appears to
be made out of the metal of the USS Indianapolis, a U.S. nuclear
submarine in operation from 1977-1998.
Entering the Crucible to get into Florida on page 19, the P.A.
system tells Snake, "Please follow the orange line to begin your
immigration process." In
Escape from New York,
Snake was also told to follow an orange line for processing into
New York Maximum Security Penitentiary.
The gun Snake grabs up in his right hand on page 19 appears to
be an Uzi. The general Uzi line of weapons was
designed by Israeli Captain Uziel Gal in the late 1940s and
named after him.
On page 21, one of the Russian nuclear missiles acquired from
Cuba by the F.R.F. is seen planted in the ground along the
Florida border as Snake exits the Crucible arena.
The F.R.F. soldiers on page 21 are carrying M-16 variant machine
guns.
In the final panel of the issue, Snake meets the Twins who run
Florida. They call themselves Romulus and Remus. In Roman
mythology,
Romulus and Remus were the twin brothers who founded Rome.
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Snake Plissken Chronicles Episode Studies