Snake Plissken is going to have a very busy fall. Mad Cave Studios has launched a new Escape from New York comic book series that sends John Carpenter’s iconic antihero into the prison territories of Chicago, and the publisher has already announced where Snake is headed next: the North Pole. Escape from New York: Escape from Chicago is being published across September, October, and November, followed immediately by the one-shot Escape from New York: Escape from the North Pole in December.
The first issue of Escape from New York: Escape from Chicago went on sale September 23. Written by Kyle Higgins and illustrated by Val Rodrigues, the series finds Snake working as a coyote, smuggling people and contraband across the dangerous dead zones between prison territories. His latest job is to extract a woman named Maya Torres, who is wanted by Chicago’s warlord.
The Chicago adventure introduces a new dystopian setting for Snake, with different factions controlling different parts of the city. And judging by the solicitations for the next two issues, things are about to get very complicated.
Issue #2 of Escape from New York: Escape from Chicago is scheduled for October 28. The issue finds Snake and Maya trying to survive Chicago’s hostile territories while dealing with some serious bad blood between them. The Stockyard Nation controls the industrial South Side and runs scavenger operations through abandoned slaughterhouses. The Magnificent Mile Syndicate has taken over the city’s former financial district, while the Lakefront Raiders control the highways with fast-moving vehicle gangs. Snake may know how to move through hostile territory, but Chicago presents an entirely different challenge: every neighborhood is claimed and every street is being watched.
Issue #3 arrives November 25, and the story gets even bigger. Maya’s parents previously smuggled a mysterious device into Chicago, and that device could potentially change the balance of power between the city’s warring gangs. Maya’s parents died during the mission, but now that Maya has resurfaced, everyone in Chicago seems to want her. Snake was hired to get Maya out of the city. Unfortunately, that’s looking less like an extraction and more like a suicide mission.
Snake doesn’t get much time to rest after escaping Chicago. On December 23, Mad Cave will release Escape from New York: Escape from the North Pole, a 40-page one-shot written by “Fearless” Fred Kennedy and illustrated by Danilo Beyruth. The story takes Snake somewhere much colder than the streets of Chicago: the Ellesmere Island Containment Facility, described as the northernmost prison in the world. After being caught smuggling contraband across the border, Snake is sent to Camp Vincent, where he comes under the control of the Canadian Shield. The organization patrols the Arctic and hunts Soviet factions that survived the aftermath of World War III. Snake is given a choice: he can remain on Ellesmere Island permanently, or he can track down and rescue Soviet geneticist Dr. Svetlana Lysenko from a Siberian bioweapons facility. Unfortunately for Snake, experiments at the facility have mutated into dangerous abominations.
The new Mad Cave series gives Snake another adventure four decades after Kurt Russell first brought the character to the screen in John Carpenter‘s 1981 classic Escape from New York. The original film was set in a then-futuristic 1997, with Manhattan transformed into a maximum-security prison and Snake sent in to rescue the President after Air Force One crashes inside the city.
Escape from L.A. brought Russell back as Snake in 1996, with the character sent into a futuristic, prison-island version of 2013 Los Angeles to retrieve a dangerous package from the city’s criminal ruler. The sequel relocated the action from Manhattan to California but kept Snake’s cynical attitude and knack for getting dragged into impossible missions.
This isn’t Snake’s first trip into the world of comics. BOOM! Studios previously published several Escape from New York stories, including one memorable adventure that crossed Snake’s path with Jack Burton from Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China.
Mad Cave’s new series is being written by Kyle Higgins, with Val Rodrigues on art and Jeff Eckleberry handling lettering. Higgins described Escape from New York as one of the movies that taught him what genre storytelling could be, while Rodrigues said he approached drawing Snake as both a fun and challenging opportunity.
Snake Plissken is also headed back to the big screen, although in that case he’ll be played by someone other than Kurt Russell. Zack Snyder is developing a new Escape from New York movie, and he recently offered some details about his approach during an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. Snyder said his version will be set in 1997 but viewed from the perspective of 1981, with the conflict between the United States police force and criminal elements beginning on July 9, 1981.
Snyder has also described Carpenter’s movie as a combination of kitsch, camp, and satire, saying those qualities are part of what he wants to preserve in his take. No release date or official casting for Snake has been announced.
In the meantime, fans don’t have to wait for the movie to see what happens to Plissken next. Escape from New York: Escape from Chicago is already underway, with new issues arriving in September, October, and November, followed by Escape from New York: Escape from the North Pole on December 23. That’s a lot of escaping for one Snake.
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