The Prisoner: Shattered Visage, art by Dean Motter
What follows is an attempt to briefly chronicle a history of The Prisoner in comic books. It will, by necessity, be incomplete, because I don’t want to quote whole articles from publications I respect, nor do I want to give away all plot points to Askwith/Motter’s The Prisoner: Shattered Visage, in hopes that readers will seek it out. Instead, consider this a touchstone for learning more about the history of Prisoner comics, both published and unpublished.
Our story starts with Prisoner fan and Marvel editor Marv Wolfman (who recently eulogized McGoohan on his blog), who secured the rights to the Prisoner license in the mid-1970s. Wolfman had planned to script the book himself but had to delegate to someone else when he became editor-in-chief. The writer getting the nod was Steve Englehart, who was also a fan of the show. He inherited Wolfman’s artist, the great Gil Kane. Kane didn’t have much time on his hands either, so layouts were done by Joe Staton.
In the Marvel style, art was produced before the full script. However, by the time Kane’s 18 pages worth of pencils were produced, Englehart had a falling out with Marvel, and was poised to leave the company. He had one piece of unfinished business before leaving, though. As he wrote in an essay published in the magazine Comic Book Artist, “I’d been waiting a long time to write The Prisoner, and by God! I was going to write that issue.” Marvel told him he had to turn in the script the following day, and Englehart worked into the night to finish it. Script and art for the first issue completed, Marvel still declined to publish. Said Englehart: “Marvel got cold feet because I was a radical who’d resigned over honor, and here was a script about a radical who’d resigned over honor.”
Englehart and Kane’s adaptation of the first episode of The Prisoner remained unpublished though Topps Comics came close. Englehart worked with inker Steve Leiahola to complete the splash page of the issue for a booklet for the Bay Area Con:
Art by Gil Kane, inks by Steve Leiahola
In 2002, Heritage Comics sold all 18 pages of original art to Kane’s Prisoner adaptation. Their auction carried the following description:
Gil Kane – Original Art for “The Prisoner” – Complete 18-page story (Marvel, unpublished). An instant hit upon its debut in 1966, “The Prisoner” was the story of Number Six, played by Patrick McGoohan, a secret agent trapped in “The Village”. A popular show to this day, there were at least two abortive efforts to bring the show to the four-color page before DC eventually succeeded in 1988. According to Steranko’s Mediascene Magazine (Nov.-Dec. 1977), the idea of creating a comic adaptation of the popular TV show came via a proposal by Marv Wolfman, leading eventually to a work-up by writer Steve Englehart and artist Gil Kane. The project was reportedly shot down and reassigned to Jack Kirby, who produced a more finished, yet ultimately unproduced book. To our knowledge, although the Kirby pages have surfaced from time to time, this is the first time the Gil Kane effort, long assumed to be lost, has ever been seen by the public. Offered here are 18 pages of tightly finished pencils with indications for the placement of word balloons and various editorial notes and markings. Each page measures approximately 17.5″ x 11.5″, and all are in excellent condition. This was Kane at the height of his creative output, and his total mastery of the form shines through on every page. We are pleased to be able to offer this newly-found treasure to Kane’s legion of fans.
Some samples of Kane’s art can still be seen on the auction page. Here are but a pair of those pages, the rest can be seen for free by registering with the Heritage site.
Arrival by Gil Kane
Arrival art by Gil Kane
Following the deep-sixing of the Englehart/Kane story, Stan Lee turned the duty of adapting The Prisoner over to old collaborator Jack Kirby (If you don’t know who Jack Kirby is, do yourself a favor and Google his name. We’ll wait, don’t worry. Now try to imagine the 20th Century without him.). Comics scholar Charles Hatfield picks up the trail there, in his wonderful essay, “Once Upon a Time: Kirby’s Prisoner,” for the Jack Kirby Collector.
Kirby had earlier included a Prisoner homage story in his renowned run with Stan Lee on the Fantastic Four, that saw the titular heroes banished to a town run by Doctor Doom. The mood of the show, and the sci-fi modernist designs, seemed especially suited for Kirby’s art, as did the heavy-browed visage of McGoohan, who resembled Kirby heroes of the 1950s. Like Kane before him, Kirby completed a full issue of the Prisoner before Marvel abandoned it, reportedly due to the lack of action in the mostly expository issue.
Kirby’s art too has surfaced. The first six pages were inked by Mike Royer, and the rest exist in pencils only. Many pages have appeared in Kirby Collector, while others, like those below, regularly make the rounds of the “blogosphere.” Owner / original scanner unknown:
The Prisoner by Jack Kirby
The Prisoner in the Village by Jack Kirby
Number 6 interrogates a waitress, art by Jack Kirby
The resignation scene by Jack Kirby
Meet Number 2, art by Jack Kirby
Angelo Muscat, drawn by Jack Kirby!
Not until 1988 did an official Prisoner adaptation see print, at the hands of writer Mark Askwith and writer/artist Dean Motter (of Mister X fame), for DC Comics. Titled, “Shattered Visage,” this adaptation was set twenty years after the dismantling of the village, where Number Six is rumored, at least among intelligence circles, to still live. The memoirs of the last Number Two (as “played” in the comic by Leo McKern) have been published as The Village Idiot, supervised by government officer Thomas Drake. Drake’s wife Alice is setting out on an around-the-world yacht trip, but when the boat runs aground on the island holding the Village, the story takes a turn for the…enigmatic? Metaphorical? Multi-layered? Complex? Perhaps we’ll just say that the comic, in it’s playful spirit, serves well as a sequel to Fall Out.
Obscure references to the original series, and to other spy fictions, permeate the story, which includes a cameo by my favorite Number Two, Georgina Cookson. I’m not completely sold on the ending of the tale, but find it a fascinating and rewarding read. Motter told Comic Book Artist Magazine of his feelings about the story, and the original series:
When I was first approached I remember thinking: “I can do the story of a man with no name trapped in an architectural nightmare where nothing is as it seems.” Hell, I had been riffing on that theme in my own Mister X for a couple of years! While the influences of Kafka and Orwell were usually capricious in Mister X, they seemed more ephemeral in The Prisoner TV show. Though Timothy Leary, The Beatles, Lewis Carroll, and Ian Fleming are often cited as the program’s Zeitgeists, I think it has always been obvious that the ordeal of Number Six had really more in common with Animal Farm, 1984 and The Castle. Indeed, each episode opened more like Metamorphosis than a 007 adventure. In any case, much more thought went into that discussion by McGoohan et al. long after the series ended.
Still available fairly inexpensively, The Prisoner: Shattered Visage still generates discussion among fans. Recently, a group of fans began publishing an audio play of the comic.
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For what it’s worth, my favorite two pages are these:
Shattered Visage, art by Dean Motter
Digital watch! Art by Dean Motter
Other tributes and homages to the Prisoner abound, in Grant Morrison’s Invisibles, for instance, and Alan Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier. Evan Dorkin re-posted an old cartoon, “Prisoner of Second Ave.”…
Art by Evan Dorkin
…Along with a brief tribute:
Ah, it comes to all of us and 80 is a fine number to hit at the end of it all, but this one hurt. I’m a big mark for McGoohan, onscreen he just keeps your eyes and holds them, and while his acting style is certainly affected and clipped and a bit odd, I love it. I always wished he worked a bit more than he did, but maybe seeing him in more dreck, which is what mostly gets made, would have diminished his enigma. Then again, a few minutes with him in mediocre stuff like The Phantom (which I like, but it’s hardly great stuff) or Silver Streak, and it’s like good special effects in a so-so film, at least you got to see that happen on the screen. Although if he was in some really topnotch stuff, it could’a been real magic. If he cared for that, which he didn’t. He did what he wanted, how he wanted, he was a free man. His button said Number 6, but he was Number 1, baby.
I haven’t heard of any new sanctioned Prisoner comic strips on the publishing horizon, but to close, I’d like to point you in the direction of the blog of Clayton McCormick, who is also revisiting the Village in a free online comic:
Art by Clayton McCormick
We’d be remiss too, if we didn’t mention our own future comic effort…but it seems a little awkward to declare, I am not a number, I am Mister 8!
Be seeing you!
EDIT 07/28/2009:
For the purpose of presenting a complete account, I want to add the most recent comic adaptation of the most recent version of the Priz, created by AMC. It’s available for download at the AMC website as a PDF.
