Snake Plissken - Escape from Snake Plissken - Derek Adnams

Page 1 – (6 Panels)

1.1:  Exterior, sunset, Snake Plissken’s face illuminated by the sun’s rays.  He is high above the Earth, meditating on top of the World Trade Center.  His eye is closed.

Snake (caption):  What is the sound of one eye closing?

1.2:  Exterior, Snake standing inside the vaudeville theater from Escape from New York.  The stage is visible, the curtains drawn, some homeless prisoners acting out a pantomime onstage.

Snake (caption):  Is it the same as the air rushing past your face when the curtain’s pulled back to reveal the mask beneath the mask.

1.3:  Exterior, Snake walking up the steps of the NY Public library, on his way to meet Brain.

Snake (caption):  What is the sound of one eye closing, that inward search for meaning that is always just beyond the grasp of our rational minds?

1.4:  Snake walking through the main concourse of Grand Central Station, surrounded by the Duke’s men.

Snake (caption):  Is it the destination we arrive at easily, with no journey to build character and test our resolve?

1.5:  Snake fighting Slag, the tail-end of the fight when Snake gets the upper hand.

Snake (caption):  Every battle we wage is just an exterior reflection of an interior truth.

Snake (caption):  Never an opponent.

Snake (caption):  Always a teacher.

1.6:  Exterior, sunset, Snake, eye open, floating in lotus posture above the roof of the World Trade Center.  He has achieved Nirvana, bathed in a blue halo of enlightenment.

Snake (caption):  I am the sound of one eye closing.

Snake Plissken – Cheat Code – MK Stangeland Jr.

(1 Panel)

Panel 1: The streets of NEW YORK, where an upside down box travels through the city. It’s large enough to hide two or three full-grown adults. There are a number of criminals about, but none of them seem to notice the box.

SNAKE PLISSKEN: (Thought Balloon) Wish someone had told me about this trick years ago.

(END PAGE)

Snake Plissken - Maybe a Peninsula - Grant McLaughlin

Three rows of panels.  First row is long and thin, made up of panel 1; second row is panels 2 through 4, all equal sized; and third row is the final two panels, with more focus on the last one.

1 - A plane flies through a dark night.  A single, silhouetted figure is visible jumping from its tail.

CAPTION (WATTERS): "From the beginning, I knew the mission was going to be different."

2 - Still night time.  A forest.  The figure (Captain Adam Watters) walks away from a tree where his parachute rig has caught.  He's spec ops, decked in out all manner of equipment and tech to get him through the wilderness.

CAPTION (WATTERS): "As if its very existence would change everything."

3 - Dawn is creeping over the horizon.  Captain Watters fords a river, his equipment over his head and the forest at his back.

CAPTION (WATTERS): "And it did."

4 - We're well into the afternoon, early evening.  Captain Watters is climbing a mountain.  It's not easy going, but mountain climbing so rarely is.

CAPTION (WATTERS) (1): "It was only a gut feeling back then.

CAPTION (WATTERS) (2): "But it was right."

5 - Getting towards night.  Long shot.  Captain Watters trudges through snow towards a lonely cabin in the distance.  Both the man and the building are small, isolated - the only things visible in the shot.

CAPTION (WATTERS): "Knowing what I know now, I still believe that no man is an island"

6 - Captain Watters has arrived at the cabin.  We're well into night at this juncture.  Snake Plissken sits on the porch, smoking and disinterested in this new arrival.

WATTERS: Mr. Plissken, the world needs--

PLISSKEN (interrupting): Not interested.

CAPTION (WATTERS): But Snake Plissken is as close as you're going to get.

Snake Plissken - The Leningrad Ruse - Ray Wonsowski

Layout:
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Panel 1- the skyline of wartorn Leningrad, night. Blue gas explosions dot the buildings and black sky.

CAPTION: Captain Berrigan called it "the Ruse". Dragoon choppers would loudly attack the west end fortifications of Leningrad...

Panel 2- SNAKE PLISSKEN fighting the controls in a Gullfire ultralight cockpit, the glider plane on fire around him. He's wearing flare goggles, but he's removed the air mask from his lower face, his teeth grit from the effort.

CAPTION: ...while Black Light squadron glided in silently and carpet-bombed the Russian premier's bunker.

CAPTION: Bullshit.

Panel 3- the Gullfire crashes down the middle of a gas-strewn street, anti-American graffiti in Cyrillic marking the walls. The gas is a toxic pea-soup green fog.

CAPTION: Plane controls jammed on all of us when we tried to release our payloads. We were expected to kamikaze to complete the mission...

Panel 4- SNAKE retreats down an alley, Desert Eagle .50 caliber pistols in his hands as he steps over the dead homeless. We can see the goggle glass over his left eye is shattered.

CAPTION: Brass didn't expect any of us to stumble back behind our lines. They tried to polish the turd best they could...

Panel 5- SNAKE looks at his reflection in a cracked bathroom mirror. His left eye has lost all color, and is a sickly milky grey. His shirt is off, and we can see that he has hastily taped his ribs.

CAPTION: ...gave me a Purple Heart and the Medal of Valor. After the ceremony, dropped'em in the White House urinal.

Panel 6- close-up, the eyes of SNAKE PLISSKEN. The left is covered by the infamous black eye patch, but the right burns with rage.

CAPTION: Government wants to play by prison rules, fine.

CAPTION: But I'm making'em my bitch first.

Why Snake Plissken?

...I thought he was dead...

"Call me Snake"

Actually, I'm dedicating this week to my Dad. I was 12, maybe 13, when he brought home our first VCR. He never could set the clock, blinking correctly only at noon and midnight. But the local video rental shop had a great collection of science fiction, suspense, and horror. The videotape machine was my first exposure to The Exorcist and the Omen (Gregory Peck!), Deathstalker and Conan the Barbarian, Blade Runner (my all-time favorite film!!)...and John Carpenter's Escape from New York.

Yeah, you remember it....

John Carpenter is just pure entertainment to me. Halloween. Assault on Precinct 13. The Thing. Big Trouble in Little China. Ghosts of Mars. In the Mouth of Madness. But Escape from New York, I cannot even come close to describing how this movie affected my young mind. The synth-simple title theme music, Lee-#&$%ing-van Cleef, who bridged the gap between Kurt Russell and Clint Eastwood's Man with No Name, the ruined wreckage of New York City, the Big Apple rotten at the core, Adrienne Barbeau, Isaac Hayes as the Big Boss Man, President Donald Pleaance and Ernest Borgnine...too...much...awesome...

Almost forgot Harry Dean "Don't call me Harold" Stanton.

But Kurt Russell...man, his portrayal of Snake Plissken, Special Forces hero turned haunted war vet, turned criminal, turned traitor. Captured prisoner offered a pardon in exchange for a suicide mission: Air Force One has crashed in the middle of Manhattan Island, now an uber-maximum security prison colony, and the President, holding time-critical information, has to be rescued in less than 24 hours.

He even escaped from New Jersey.

But that's all just window dressing. What strikes me is that Snake is a fictional version of the things Dad tried to tell me when I was a kid. Don't give in to bullies and thugs. Live with honor. Don't give up, only the difficult things are worth anything. Stand by your friends. Trust, but verify. Do what's right, even when it's hard. Especially when it's hard. Morals trump ethics every time (because ethics help us live with others, but morals help us live with ourselves). Authority only has the power we allow it. And most importantly, that freedom is never given, only earned.

Oh, yeah, and don't smoke, it's bad.

So, Happy Father's Day, Dads everywhere. Oh, and by the way, Boom Studios has been doing a killer Escape from New York comic that bears checking out. See you all soon, off to have breakfast with Dad....

Thanks, Dad.