The story itself is terrible – almost a perfect distillation of toxic masculinity as these two posture over who owns the woman. This leads to Pancho forcing her to perform fellatio on him right there in the bar to show his dominance, which leads to the other man forcing Pancho’s bodyguard to sodomize Pancho in revenge. The ending is the cherry on the shit sundae – a double-helping of domestic violence and slut shaming.

The only saving grace is the sub-plot of the people playing poker – panels 2 and 6. They show up throughout the story and two of them are clearly distracted by the public posturing and sex, but that one guy who takes advantage of the distraction to check out the cards of the other two is awesome. Later panels show him going through the deck to find the cards he needs and, unsurprisingly, he wins the hand. It’s a great use of a sub-plot to add a much-needed comedic element to an otherwise awful story.

(Heavy Metal issue #179, January 1999 – Page 30 Snake: Double Pair by Bernet and Abuli)