Snakewoman: Curse of the 68 #1
Zeb Wells, story
Pradip Ingale, art
Virgin Comics, $2.99

Snakewoman: Curse of the 68 #2
Zeb Wells, story
Manu P.K., art
Virgin Comics, $2.99

by David Uzumeri of Funnybook Babylon

Snakewoman: Curse of the 68 appears to be the title through which Virgin is publishing a number of one-shot Snakewoman stories, scattered throughout time and space – Snakewoman: Legends of the Dark Knight, if you will. Everything you need to know for each issue is fairly quickly explained in the recap page (which did a good enough job filling me in – I’ve never read an issue of Snakewoman before). For those who are insanely lazy, though, the general premise is that a bunch of British soldiers desecrated an Indian snake god shrine and really pissed off the female snake god. 68 of them escaped and are now hunted down through the generations by the Snake Woman. She has a lifetime to kill them all, but if she leaves just one, they’ll all get reincarnated.

Like all Virgin comics, production values are high, with the writing half handled by a duo of experienced filmmakers: Bollywood mainstay Shekhar Kapur and Wizard Fan Film maestro (and 1/4 of the Spidey braintrust) Zeb Wells. The first issue’s art comes from Pradip Ingale, and it is a western story. The problem with it, as a western, is that there is absolutely nothing to distinguish it from every other western comic ever, and this problem of homogeneity is representative of this issue. It stars – well, it stars a bunch of stereotypical western characters – the sheriff, the doctor, the drunkard, and the dandy – who are largely interchangeable in terms of dialogue and physical appearance. Basically the only things that sets them apart are the amount and style of facial hair.

Of course, all of this also has something to do with ancient Indian snake worshippers getting sacked and a female snake goddess wanting revenge, so that shows at some point and things start really falling apart. The issue spends about half of its time building up these somewhat interchangeable characters, and then in the second half, they all die. What’s truly remarkable about this is the narrative pointlessness of their deaths; this reads like THAT ISSUE of a superhero comic – you know what I mean, there have been many – where a new villain takes out a bunch of poorly-fleshed-out C-listers to demonstrate that they are, indeed, completely badass. Think the Mist/JLE issue of Starman, or the massacre in Eclipso. Now imagine if that was a one-shot story set outside of any shared universe – and outside of any continuing series, and not told especially well, either. That’s the first issue of Snakewoman. If I weren’t reviewing, I doubt I would have picked up the second issue.

That would have been a shame.

The second issue, with art by Manu P.K. and D. Seshasainan, attempts to contextualize the Snakewoman mythos within the framework of either Russian history, a Disney movie or a Boney M song, depending on how you first heard it. It’s about that pop-culture mainstay, the ganging up on Rasputin. Except that it has something to do with the Snakewoman mythos, which really takes the wind out of the sails of whatever mystery there is since you pretty much know it’s going to end with Snakewoman killing everybody, and some really clumsy attempts at foreshadowing (including a reference to a “den of snakes”) don’t do much to dissuade the reader from that notion. Neither does the ending, where Snakewoman kills everybody.

I won’t ruin Snakewoman’s identity in this issue, although the answer to it is really quite funny and engages in an attempt at retconning actual human history, an idea that almost always falls flat (unless you’re James Robinson). I also had some pretty serious problems with the art in this issue, especially the “transformation” into Snakewoman, which largely consists of your hand growing some claws and a Photoshop “snakeskin” semi-transparent texture being applied to your face. Adding to the issue’s problems is a truly mystifying scene with great sexual connotation between Rasputin and a young Anastasia that seems to be trying to provide some degree of foreshadowing and symbolism but rather just comes off as really, really, really creepy.

In the end, this entire project has the depressing feel of going through the motions – Zeb Wells is scripting ideas Shekhar Kapur is paying him to script, and Virgin’s artist legion are drawing each done-in-one. It feels almost like an attempt to cash in on the Snakewoman name, but I’m not entirely sure there’s a big jackpot there to stick your hands in. I’m really not sure why this miniseries was commissioned, or written, or published – the individual stories range from trite to obnoxious and don’t seem to be forming any sort of grander story to give context. It’s just one-shots about a crazy snake lady who wants revenge on people who don’t even remember hurting her. I’m sure everyone involved had the best of intentions, but the entire plot of the book is basically a game of freeze tag I played on the schoolgrounds when I was five – gotta catch ‘em all before time is up!