Mike Isenberg recommends Escape From New York #1
As I mentioned in my review of Big Trouble In Little China #1, the storytelling method that director John Carpenter applies to his films is one that works just as well in the world of comics. Carpenter tends to take a “cheesy” genre premise and lavish it with care, talent, high production values, and a clear love for whatever it was that makes the genre fun in the first place. Like an alchemist with a philosopher’s stone, Carpenter uses his sincerity to transmute “cheese” into “charm,” while avoiding the usual pitfall of “camp.”
Many of the greatest genre comics employ much the same formula, so it’s no surprise that the worlds of Carpenter’s films translate so well between the two media. The darkly satiric, ultraviolent science-fiction of 1981’s Escape From New York always felt to me like it had more in common with the comics of 2000AD or Heavy Metal magazines than with anything else in the medium of film. So it makes perfect sense to now see that world on the comic book page.
Written by Christopher Sebela and drawn by Diego Barreto, Escape From New York #1 continues the story of quintessential badass Snake Plissken (played by Kurt Russel in the film). Like the Big Trouble In Little China comic, Escape picks up right where the movie ended, with page 1 recapping the final moments of the film. Plissken humiliates the president by swapping tapes and whereas the film fades to black with Snake destroying the real tape (the movie’s MacGuffin, supposedly having the potential to bring about world peace), the comic shows us the immediate consequences of this action. Namely, Snake is on the run.
His presidential pardon revoked, Plissken heads south, eventually joining up with a small group of occultists making their way to the Free Republic of Florida. The book introduces some interesting characters and fleshes out the world of the film brilliantly. A lot of care has clearly been taken to make sure that everything about the comic—from the pacing to the dialogue to the framing of the images—matches the style of the film, and it’s all been pulled off to wonderful effect.
Fans of the film should really enjoy this comic, though having seen the movie isn’t required; this is an all-new adventure for Snake Plissken, and it looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun. Can’t wait to see where it goes from here.
[Read Escape From New York #1 on comiXology]
Mike Isenberg is an Associate Production Coordinator at comiXology, and the co-writer of First Law Of Mad Science. He lives in Harlem with his cats, Tesla and Edison.
