Escape From New York #1 Review: Snake Is Back

WEPAAAA! Snake Plissken is back, fam, and somehow America managed to get even more screwed up while he was away. Escape from New York #1: Escape from Chicago could have taken the easy nostalgia route, thrown Snake on the page, hit us with a few familiar beats and called it a day. Thankfully, Kyle Higgins seems way more interested in asking what happens when the legend keeps growing while the man underneath it gets older, more tired and even less interested in everybody else’s bullshit. That is the Snake I wanted to see.

Right from the jump, this feels dirty, cold and uncomfortable in the right ways. The prison-city concept has expanded into a fractured America, but Higgins does not bury us under a damn history lesson explaining every new border and power structure. We learn this world by moving through it with Snake and Maya, and their chemistry is where the book really starts cooking. Maya knows the legend, but she is not standing around starstruck by the guy wearing the eyepatch. She pushes him, reads him and clearly understands there is a difference between Snake Plissken the myth and the irritated bastard standing next to her. Snake, naturally, would probably prefer everybody stop asking him to give a shit.

Val Rodrigues absolutely gets the assignment visually. This world looks used up. The snow, concrete, empty roads and beaten interiors make everything feel like America has been left outside too long and nobody bothered bringing it back in. More importantly, Rodrigues lets Snake look older without making him look useless. He slouches. He watches exits. He carries himself like a dude who has survived way too much and knows survival usually means somebody nearby is about to make his day worse. I dig that because trying to draw Snake like time stopped in 1981 would have been ridiculous. Let the man age. Hell, that makes him more interesting.

Natalia Marques keeps the colors restrained enough that when the violence hits, it actually hits. Jeff Eckleberry’s lettering works with that same attitude, especially when Snake starts firing off those short responses where half the fun is everything he refuses to say. The creative team is not terrified of quiet pages either, and thank goodness for that. Not every damn panel needs somebody shooting, screaming or explaining the plot. When a book lets the tension sit for a minute, the sudden violence feels meaner because you were not already numb from five pages of nonstop noise.

I do have one lil’ concern, because you know I am not giving this thing a pass just because Snake Plissken walked through the door. Every once in a while I can see the franchise machinery underneath the story. We have new cities, new factions and a much bigger broken-America playground being established, and there is always a danger with these continuations that somebody gets so excited about expanding the mythology that the character who made us care becomes a tour guide through the new lore. Please don’t do that. The strongest shit here is Snake and Maya dealing with each other while this messed-up country reveals itself around them. Keep me riding shotgun with those two and let the world build naturally.

Their relationship shows Snake’s age in a way that actually gives it some meaning, and I love the fact that the book doesn’t try to hide it. His legend has basically been frozen in everybody else’s head while the man himself kept living, bleeding and getting older. Rodrigues sells that physically, and Higgins gets mileage out of Maya interacting with somebody who has probably been turned into a hundred different stories before she ever met him. She knows what Snake represents, but she also gets to see the cranky human being behind the mythology. There is plenty to mine there without turning Snake into some sentimental old man giving speeches about the good old days. Please, for the love of Carpenter, never do that.

As a first issue, this worked for me because it respects Escape from New York without kneeling at the altar of nostalgia. Snake is still Snake. America is still a disaster. Everybody wants something from him, and he still looks like he would rather tell the entire country to kiss his ass than become anybody’s hero. But the story gives him a situation where walking away has consequences, and that is exactly the kind of pressure you need to put on this character. Do not suddenly make Snake noble. Make it increasingly difficult for him to remain detached and let us watch how pissed off that makes him.

The bigger world has me curious too. Chicago feels like one ugly piece of a country that has fractured in ways we have only started seeing, and I like that the comic is not handing us a brochure for every prison state on page three. There is plenty of time for that. Give me the borders, the factions and whatever fresh insanity America has invented as Snake crashes into them. If the series keeps revealing the world through the people, jobs and bad decisions he encounters, the expansion can feel like a natural continuation of Carpenter’s America instead of somebody building the Escape from New York Cinematic Universe. Nobody needs that PowerPoint presentation.

So yeah, fam, Escape from New York #1: Escape from Chicago got me. It has the attitude, the atmosphere and, most importantly, a version of Snake Plissken who feels like the same miserable bastard we remember without pretending decades have not passed. I want the series to stay focused on Snake and Maya, keep the world-building from swallowing them, and keep trusting those quiet moments before everything goes to hell. If it does that, we might have a continuation here that earns its place instead of simply borrowing a legendary name. Welcome back, Snake. Sorry about America. Apparently we still cannot get our shit together.

CRUSADERS SCORE:
4.5/5

Writer: Kyle Higgins
Artist: Val Rodrigues
Colorist: Natalia Marques
Letterer: Jeff Eckleberry
Publisher: Mad Cave Studios

On Sale:
9/23/2026