This is a rather frank little story. The two cowboys at the bar keep getting drunker and drunker and keep bragging about their sexual prowess. These scenes are intercut with the women complaining about the men that they have to service. When the man does make it up the stairs, he promptly passes out. One of the women tells him that he was a wild man, but he burns her with a cigarette (!) and tells her that she’s lying. One of the other women corroborates the story and the cowboy hires them to come downstairs and tell everyone else how virile he was. Ha ha ha. 😐

Until the cigarette burn and sexual assault, the story is humming along pretty nicely. The counterpoint between the two viewpoints was actually amusing. Then there was the violence against women, which completely derailed the story.

I will say this – the artist is really good at establishing where everyone is in the space of the saloon, even though most of the backgrounds are vague at best. Look at the fourth and sixth panels – the two characters are in the same relative positions, but one is now overlapping the other instead of vice-versa. This elegant panel shows that they have turned around – anchoring the sequence between the prior and following panels.

(Heavy Metal issue #198, March 2002 – Page 77 Snake: Macho Man by Bernet and Abuli)