Who’s that protagonist whose manner has become so imitated in other film portrayals of anti-heroes?  It’s Snake Plissken, brought to life by now-iconic actor Kurt Russell.  Russell was in the business since he was a boy, often acting in the live-action Disney films of the 1960s and 1970s.  However, it was the John Carpenter-directed TV movie Elvis, with the titular character played by Russell, that really changed the trajectory of his career.

When Carpenter brought Russell on for Escape from New York, his career as a director was ascendant.  Coming off two horror hits, Halloween and The Fog, he was ready to move back into action.  Ever since Watergate, he’d been thinking about governmental authority and corruption, as well as the increasing crime rate.  These ideas helped form the themes of Escape from New York.

It’s 1997, and it’s been nearly a decade since the U.S. government walled off Manhattan and turned it into a maximum- security prison due to a dramatic increase in crime in the U.S.  The catalyst that sets Snake Plissken on his journey is that the U.S. President has escaped a hijacked Air Force One, but the inmates of Manhattan Island have subsequently captured him.  Not only is the President’s life at stake, but so are the lives of millions.  The President has a tape that will likely end the war among the U.S., Soviet Union, and China.  The government thus gives one-time war hero, now-felon Snake a chance to earn his freedom if he rescues the President and the tape.

It’s a simple story without a lot of frills.  As an independent picture with a $6,000,000 budget, it had modest success by grossing $25,000,000 domestically and having mostly positive reviews.  Can a modern viewer see some of the seams of the production due to the limited budget?  Of course.

Compared to modern productions, the action is sparse.  Snake doesn’t fire his weapon until forty-three minutes in the film.  Despite his capability, he doesn’t come across as invulnerable.  He spends as much time sneaking and running as he does fighting.  There’s a moment where he sits down in frustration.  This makes him more relatable to an audience who could be put off by his lack of white hat heroism.  His gruffness though makes him interesting.  One wants to get to know the man behind the eyepatch.  The acting as a whole is memorable.  Specific praise should go out to the President (Donald Pleasance), the amicable Cabbie (Ernest Borgnine), stern Police Commissioner Hauk (Lee Van Cleef), and the antagonistic Duke of New York (Isaac Hayes).  These veteran actors bring their distinctive personas to the concrete jungle.

The visuals add to the dystopian atmosphere.  Cinematographer Dean Cundey brings his excellent camerawork to the production.  There’s a beautiful zoom shot that illuminates Cabbie’s smile and the bright yellow of his cab, contrasting with the tired gray of the buildings and streets.  Carpenter and Cundey puts color to good use to set the gloomy mood.  One notices a predominantly gray palette throughout the film.  Especially in the beginning, the only colorful imagery is either the ubiquitous U.S. insignia or the brilliant flashes emanating from the tech.  Everything else reflects the gray morality of the characters and the bleak world condition.

As with most of his filmography, Carpenter, teaming up with regular collaborator and sound engineer Alan Howarth, composed the music, providing his imitated synthesized soundscapes.  The main theme is simple and hummable, likely knowable even to those unfamiliar with the film.  However, some of the other highlights are the funky “The Duke Arrives,” the frenetic “Chase Across the 69^th Street Bridge,” and the dreamy rendering of Debussy’s “Engulfed Cathedral” that plays as Snake glides towards the Manhattan skyline.  The image of the World Trade Center matched with the gentle impressionistic melody give chills.

Will someone used to the slam-bam stylings of modern action cinema come to Escape from New York feeling let down?  Honestly, there will be some that will.  However, this film is not for them.  It’s for those who want to see a director put their vision to screen despite limited resources.  To aspiring filmmakers, it shows them that a simple, strong story and interesting characters played by actors who care often matter more than stunning visuals.  There’s a simple line where Hauk reminds Plissken that he “flew the Gullfire over Leningrad.”  We don’t get a flashback to this past mission, but that’s fine because it’s not needed.  One infers from this line that Snake has seen much, and the rescuing of the President is just another adventure.  Sometimes, less is more.  You’ll get more mood, atmosphere, and heart here than in most modern sci-fi epics.

Big Trouble in Little China / Escape From New York has spent months as one of the most consistently enjoyable comics in months, with each issue adding to the craziness that makes the series so lovable. Issue #5 was the best of the series and by the time it ended, it seemed strange that there was only one more issue before this crossover concluded. It had a lot of elements in the air and had again upturned it’s own status quo by having Jack Burton join forces with Lo Pan and the dragon-universe version of Snake Plissken (as this comic itself hilariously states early on, “Just go with it.”), so it did raise some concerns about how the series would be able to wrap up and if it would be able to satisfy the momentum it built. 

It does and doesn’t. It’s still fun, ridiculous, and full of unexpected turns, comedy, and heart, but it’s hard not to feel mildly robbed of a sense of resolution. The payoff of dragon-Snake (Dragon Plissken?) happens much quicker than expected, though it is the subject of two of the best pieces of art of the issue. Daniel Bayliss’ art and Triona Farrell’s coloring are as delightful as they have been the past five issues, with Bayliss’ cover art being representative of the way that comics can be fun.

Unfortunately, a lot of things wind up unresolved. Perhaps I wound up expecting too much out of a narrative that you should “just go with”, but it feels a little like a cop-out when we don’t get a resolution to this world and its potentially interesting blend of science fiction and mystical elements, or when the female Snake gets vaporized on the back of Dragon Plissken after having five issues hinting at something resembling an arc for the character, or at the very least potential. It feels like something really magical is going to happen by the time that the comic ends, but rather than have something ambiguous and leaving us with an idea that Snake and Jack Burton will adventure through their own multiverse, the comic takes a turn for one last punchline. Admittedly, the tone of the series feels as though a joke is the way it always should have ended, and all good jokes are built on the premise of subverting an expectation, but the expectation that it subverted was just too charming to let go of. 

Big Trouble in Little China / Escape From New York #6
3.5/5

Big Trouble in Little China / Escape From New York has spent months as one of the most consistently enjoyable comics in months, with each issue adding to the craziness that makes the series so lovable. Issue #5 was the best of the series and by the time it ended, it seemed strange that there was only one more issue before this crossover concluded. It had a lot of elements in the air and had again upturned it’s own status quo by having Jack Burton join forces with Lo Pan and the dragon-universe version of Snake Plissken (as this comic itself hilariously states early on, “Just go with it.”), so it did raise some concerns about how the series would be able to wrap up and if it would be able to satisfy the momentum it built. 

It does and doesn’t. It’s still fun, ridiculous, and full of unexpected turns, comedy, and heart, but it’s hard not to feel mildly robbed of a sense of resolution. The payoff of dragon-Snake (Dragon Plissken?) happens much quicker than expected, though it is the subject of two of the best pieces of art of the issue. Daniel Bayliss’ art and Triona Farrell’s coloring are as delightful as they have been the past five issues, with Bayliss’ cover art being representative of the way that comics can be fun.

Unfortunately, a lot of things wind up unresolved. Perhaps I wound up expecting too much out of a narrative that you should “just go with”, but it feels a little like a cop-out when we don’t get a resolution to this world and its potentially interesting blend of science fiction and mystical elements, or when the female Snake gets vaporized on the back of Dragon Plissken after having five issues hinting at something resembling an arc for the character, or at the very least potential. It feels like something really magical is going to happen by the time that the comic ends, but rather than have something ambiguous and leaving us with an idea that Snake and Jack Burton will adventure through their own multiverse, the comic takes a turn for one last punchline. Admittedly, the tone of the series feels as though a joke is the way it always should have ended, and all good jokes are built on the premise of subverting an expectation, but the expectation that it subverted was just too charming to let go of. 

Big Trouble in Little China / Escape From New York #6
3.5/5

Just as Big Trouble in Little China / Escape From New York was one of the best books at the end of 2016, it is consistently one of the best of early 2017. I mentioned in one of my early reviews that writer Grek Pak could have phoned this in and many fans would still be enthralled and that from the start it has been clear that this has instead been a well-structured, well-written original story. Likewise, he could have focused the story narrowly on Snake and Jack Burton almost exclusively. They are already well-defined characters thanks to their source material, and Pak clearly has both of their voices down to a science, but again he chooses to go one step further. Big Trouble in Little China / Escape From New York #5 had me realizing that I actually cared about all of the side characters from this crossover, whether it’s Blind Apple Mary, the omnicidal female Snake Plissken, Bobby Liu, or source material character Bob Hauk. They all have some sort of drive, but more importantly sound so dissimilar from one another that the mix of personalities is and has been one of the strongest assets of the series.

While we’re on the subject of strongest assets of the series, the art continues to be remarkably praiseworthy. Daniel Bayliss’ art imbues a sense of fun in one would be an otherwise bleak post-apocalyptic world; a sense of fun which contributes to that being the first word I jump to whenever trying to describe this event to anybody. The art in the series is good enough to warrant jumping into another series with his name attached to it, and I think him and Triona Farrell are my ideal pairing for artist/colorer. Good coloring is invisible. Great coloring stands out in the way that Farrell’s does. It’s a feast for the eyes. The two are in sync, and as the story reaches its final pages and the art rivals Chernabog-esque epicness and scale, it’s clear just how good everything going into this event is. 

The story gives us a payoff to a lot of the Blind Apple Mary stuff that may have seemed arbitrary earlier in the series. The guitar of hers that Hauk stole is a magical artifact. In a subversion of the blues-singer-sells-soul-to-write-sick-licks-at-the-crossroads trope, it turns out Mary was just legitimately the most talented guitarist in the world, but that guitar had a magic quality, one which is capable of death. This gets taken to ludicrous weaponized hair metal lengths at the end of the issue in a series of full-page splashes that honestly would have been a solid ending moment as is. Again Pak took things further than expected and we see David Lo Pan summon an eldritch abomination of a Snake Plissken as he plans to fight against the government forces with Snake Prime and Jack Burton. 

By comparison, I’m usually ready to tap out on major comic publishers’ events by the third or fourth issues. After finishing issue five out six, I find myself angry that things have to wrap up. I’m having way too much fun. 

Big Trouble in Little China / Escape From New York #5
5/5

The first two pages of Grek Pak’s Big Trouble in Little China / Escape From New York #4 perfectly illustrate both why this comic series is a must read for anybody who even casually likes the source material and why Pak is the perfect writer for the job. In those pages, Pak provides rationale for why the Snake Plisskens of the multiverse would join David Lo Pan. This isn’t necessary. Snake as a character is inherently an anti-hero, more so than some of the grittiest hero protagonists. The fact that we are treated with two entire well-drawn pages, complete with eye-patch clad Wolf Plisskens (Snake Wolfskin?) helps reinforce that the creative team behind the latest issue of the BOOM! Studios crossover series are interested in telling a great story rather than cashing in on nostalgia.

You have no idea how lucky that makes us as readers.

Big Trouble in Little China / Escape From New York #4 picks up with the split up Snake Plissken and Jack Burton, with Burton in disguise as Plissken among David Lo Pan’s forces. As Snake makes his way towards Jack, Jack finds himself forced to prove his Snake-ness among his alternate selves. It’s a genuinely hilarious scene where he makes up stories about being a murder trucker. When Snake-Prime (just deal with my identifiers, okay?) arrives, he begins to reveal that Jack Burton is actually among them in disguise. He holds a gun to Snake-Turtleneck, speculating that he might be Jack Burton, which he obviously knows is untrue, but still, it’s interesting to see how Pak keeps making Snake betraying Jack seem plausible only to swerve it. Before pulling the trigger (RIP, Snake-Turtleneck, we hardly knew ye), he reminds us about how absurdly lucky, and potentially unkillable Jack Burton is. Luckily, the other Snakes don’t question the tautology of his argument, and are spurred on by Snake to begin fighting one another. It’s an inevitable result of getting that many Snakes in one place.

What follows is an exceptionally deep conversation between Snake and Jack. While driving, Jack comments on how evil the Snakes chasing them are. Snake doesn’t think it’s as black and white as that. “They’re just Plisskens,” he says, “Just like me. And you.” Jack starts wondering out loud about his destiny, and if that darkness inherent in all of those Snakes is also inherent in him. Is he going to inevitably become that?

“Nah,” he says, in his charming Jack Burton way. And we believe it. There seems to be something about Jack that is fundamentally different than the Snake Plisskens, and it seems deeper than just Jack’s lifetime of experiences. But what of Snake-Prime? He is actively trying to help Jack. What will likely happen is what has been slowly building throughout the background of the series. The focus isn’t on how Jack is a version of Snake, but rather on how Snake is a version of Jack. Something makes Snake like Jack, and we will likely see that come full circle in the next two issues. If you haven’t started reading this event yet, you really need to get on it. It’s worth getting the back issues and diving through them. Pak’s writing is steller, Daniel Bayliss’ art is fantastic, and Triona Farrell continues to deliver my favorite coloring in a comic book.

Big Trouble in Little China / Escape From New York #4 – Rating: 4.5/5

After a first issue that was stronger and more ambitious than expected, Big Trouble in Little Chine / Escape From New York #2 makes everything bigger, raises the stakes, and most importantly establishes who the characters are in greater depth. Apart from advancing the plot in a high octane way with a highly interesting conclusion, Snake, Jack Burton, and Bobby Liu are all given enriching character moments.  

The way that the comic introduces the similarities between Snake and Jack is brilliant. The first issue of the crossover seemed most concerned in establishing the differences between our two heroes. Seeing Snake’s thousand-yard-stare as he flashes back to the Siege of Leningrad softens the character without sacrificing him. It adds a level of connection that makes the story feel legitimized and not like enhanced fanfiction.  Greg Pak’s writing is complemented perfectly by Daniel Bayliss’ art, which illuminates the difference between these two men to tremendous effect in a panel where Snake punches Bobby Liu and Jack catches him. The expression on each man’s face manages to completely sell the inherent difference between them in one panel. Just like with #1, Triona Farrell’s coloring work is noticeably excellent. 

The amplification of Jack’s accident-induced heroics is one of the best things I’ve read in a comic all year. For two issues, representations of his luck have been extremely engaging, and it’s something that I eagerly await in future installments. Apart from that, Pak’s writing is really excellently paced. The plot never has a lull and switches gears before any scene seems to overstay its welcome. 

While strong character work dominates the main cast, with Bobby Liu even being given more depth and higher stakes, the inclusion of Blind Apple Mary is, as of now, strange. Pak obviously picked her to be rescued over some sort of MacGuffin for a reason, but she isn’t fleshed out in this issue. I look forward to seeing where the story goes with her, but as of now she robs the story of a little bit of its momentum. The comic ends with David Lo Pan summoning an army of alternate universe Snake Plisskens to do his bidding. This is a very interesting set-up for the rest of the crossover. The past two issues painted Jack as an alternate universe version of Snake while maintaining the possibility of Snake being an alternate Jack Burton. The summoning of all of these eyepatch-clad Snakes highlights that Jack is the anomaly and really leaves a lot of interesting narrative space for Pak to explore in the next four issues. Is there an army of Jack Burton’s to fight back? Will Snake reflect on his morality as being similar to the army that now serves David Lo Pan? This is a fantastic comic, and if you haven’t started reading it yet, it isn’t too late to catch up on #1 and #2 in anticipation of #3. This is going to be a wild ride. 

Big Trouble in Little China / Escape From New York #2

Rating: 4.5 / 5

After a summer where mainstream comic events have been bogged down by bloat, delays, and odd plot choices, the immediate impact of reading Greg Pak’s Big Trouble in Little China / Escape From New York crossover is thoroughly refreshing. Both John Carpenter creations have continued in comic book form, including a brief one-shot from Marvel and, most recently, a pair of ongoing series from BOOM! Studios. The comic series have had the general hindrances that licensed comics often have, but have been an underappreciated and consistent experience of the past few years. A crossover of Kurt Russell’s most iconic performances (sans Captain Ron) elicits both skepticism and nostalgic optimism. For readers who pick up this book with no knowledge of either the films or comics (I’m sure there are, like, four of you out there), this opening issue provides enough context and outstanding artwork to entertain. For diehard fans of the comic continuations, don’t expect too much continuity. For fans of both source films, which is ultimately the target audience, this first issue is fantastic.

One of the biggest challenges this comic has to overcome is merging the styles of both Russellverses, and making Snake and Jack look, speak, and act like different characters. Pak does stellar characterization work throughout, with each character being unmistakably identifiable. Daniel Bayliss’ art is another standout of the issue, fluctuating smoothly between the quieter, exposition-laden moments and the high-octane, also exposition-laden moments. While this issue is understandably pretty heavy on establishing who its characters are and why they are now together, it never feels like a hindrance. Pak gives them enough to do and Bayliss gives noteworthy reactions when the characters don’t say anything. Bayliss also deserves credit for making Snake and Jack look like different universe interpretations of the same character, and not like vintage Kurt Russell cosplaying as his favorite 1980’s badasses. I would be doing a huge disservice if I failed to mention Triona Farrell’s contribution as the colorist. In a comic that is dense with fun writing and engaging artwork, the fact that the color work not only stands out but in many panels outshines the other work is insane. This book is an absolute gem to look at.

The plot is mostly concerned with getting the heroes together and establishing the tone of the five issues that are going to follow. A former security guard named Bobby Liu attempts to summon the great hero Snake Plissken, but gets some John Carpenter-style BOGO when he summons Snake and Big Trouble in Little China‘s Jack Burton. It turns out that Jack is his universe’s incarnation of Snake Plisskin, or maybe Snake is an incarnation of Jack, and Bobby Liu is an incarnation of Big Trouble‘s Wang Chi. Stylistically, this feels more like Big Trouble in Little China than it does Escape From New York, which is honestly the best route they could have gone. There are elements of Escape From New York‘s grittiness, but the fun and magic of Big Trouble provide the most appropriate backdrop. Plus, Jack Burton’s clumsy brand of heroism wouldn’t translate as well. When Jack routinely gets, as Bobby Liu describes it, “lucky”, it is sold so earnestly in both story and artwork. 

I was expecting to enjoy this comic as a fan of the source movies, and a casual fan of Big Trouble in Little China’s ongoing series. It managed to surprise me in just about every conceivable way. For fans of both movies, this is a no-brainer. Even if you aren’t the most avid comic book fan, you should definitely still be reading this. It is adrenaline fueled writing and some of the best art / color combos I’ve seen in a comic this year. 

Big Trouble in Little China / Escape From New York #1

5/5