Author Meth structures Snaked as a series of flashbacks that force the reader to pay attention, as they reveal the facts behind a nonstop series of personal and political betrayals that push our anti-hero into taking grisly vengeance. Nobody in the story is what he or she first appears to be - and it's a toss-up as to who will ultimately turn out to be the snakiest character in the story. Each of the first three issues contains at least one good act of appalling violence to keep the horror heads reading. (Worked for me!) But with one notable exception, we don't feel bad for any of the victims. All of the adult characters – even one we're told is "dumb as a bag of hammers" - are too duplicitous to engage our sympathies.

British artist Rufus Dayglo has a thick brush style that is clear enough to depict the story's violence without getting too clinical about it. (When you consider that one of these acts involves a prisoner's castration, perhaps we can be grateful the guy didn't go all S. Clay Wilson on us.) His work shares some of the same expressionistic tendencies as Australian artist Ashley Wood (the two have even worked together on a Tank Girl comic), though, in general, I find Dayglo's art more immediately accessible. While he's not averse to sticking a map of the constellations in the sky background or deconstructing several characters' faces into little more than outlines during a foreshadowing dream sequence, such visual antics do not disrupt the flow of Meth's deeply cynical, serpentine horror tale.

Snaked has reportedly been optioned as a movie, with an IDW trade paperback collecting the full five-part story set for July '08. Just in time for the Democratic and Republican conventions, though whether this proves to be propitious scheduling is something only the gods of American politics know for certain. Me, I find Meth & Dayglo's free-wheeling horror comic plenty entertaining even without the "real-life" political trimmings.