Mister 8

If you’re working on a secret agent themed design project and want a genuine retro feel without resorting to overstated curly serifs and slants, why not turn to the fonts used by the originals? We’ll start with a bit of James Bond:

From Russia With Love Poster

The second James Bond movie asked you to “Meet James Bond” in what I believe is a variation of Cooper Black. Note the single tiered ‘a’ in the poster, however, compared to the double-tiered ‘a’ in the sample below:

Cooper Black

(more…)

McGoohan as Number Six

From AMC, in advance of their upcoming remake, fans and future fans can watch the Prisoner online at AMC’s website.

In addition, there’s a tournament for viewers to vote on the best Number 2 (current leader, and I agree, is Georgina Cookson, from my favorite episode Many Happy Returns), and some appreciations from prominent Priz fans.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the site is that AMC has given voice to both the “official” fan club, Six of One, and their excommunicated members at the Unmutual. For more information on very un-Number-Six-like behavior, and for an interesting look at fan dynamics, check out the allegations presented by the Unmutuals at Six of One Info. I’d like to disclaim that I’m not a member of any Prisoner fan club, but do study fan activities as part of my doctoral studies. I don’t take any side in this particular debate, but…like I said…the conflict is certainly interesting.

In case you haven’t heard the news from multiple sources, Patrick McGoohan, aka John Drake, aka Number Six, has passed away at the age of 80. He was a source of inspiration to us here at Mister 8, and we wish him well in whatever afterlife might exist. Here’s hoping it’s not the Village.

Here are a series of enlightening interviews with McGoohan on the subject of The Prisoner:

The Prisoner for the Apple IIe

The theme for this month’s Themed Thursdays was spy-themed Nintendo games, but I don’t want to stop talking about Patrick McGoohan-related things just yet. So I’m going to expand the topic to video games in general and discuss what was one of the first video games based on an already-existing secret agent property: The Prisoner for the Apple IIe, and its sequel, The Prisoner 2.

Prior to today, I’d never played this games, but I am a fan of text adventures in general. This one’s a bit different, and in many ways, the connection to the Prisoner is tenuous, but still a fun look at what early computer games were about.

In the game, the player takes on the role of a retired spy named “#”. At the beginning of gameplay, the player is shown the code that contains the top secret information behind the player’s resignation. When the player wakes up on The Island, s/he first has to navigate the invisible maze to leave the cottage, and then has to navigate a confusing assortment of buildings, including a library and a carnival.

I’ve not made it all the way through the game, but have encountered a number of interesting puzzles and tricks that the computer uses to try to get you to reveal your resignation code (including an instance of using your resignation code in a real-looking error prompt). It’s an ingenious structure designed by Edu-Ware, primarily designer David Mullich, that regularly breaks the “fourth wall.”

There are a handful of interesting apocryphal trivia items passed around about this game, including that it was used in training by the Central Intelligence Agency. One item that turned out to be true was the fact that the game, though it bears the Prisoner name and logo, was unlicensed! Says Mullich in an interview with Tea Leaves:

My idea was to create a game that was merely inspired by The Prisoner television series, and so I renamed The Village as The Island, No. 2 as The Caretaker, and so on to avoid copyright infringement. However, when Edu-Ware told me that they planned to call the game The Prisoner and use the television series’ title font, I asked them to get permission from the show’s copyright holder, ITC Entertainment. I later found out that all they did was call ITC and ask if they minded if they created a Prisoner-themed restaurant, and when they replied that they didn’t care, Edu-Ware took that to mean that they could get away with releasing the game without acquiring the copyright. Nobody outside the game industry paid much attention to computer games in those early days.

Apple IIe Prisoner 2 Cover

The game led to a sequel, The Prisoner 2, that incorporated graphics, and changed a few of the puzzles around. A review in Analog Magazine declared the following:

Prisoner II is a superb package (I dare not call it a “game”) that should provide weeks of entertainment. It goes far beyond the traditional “collect the right combination of treasures” adventure, and includes some diabolical arcade-like sequences to frus- trate you even more. I’m told that it is possible to escape from the Island. If you succeed, you will never forget it.

In the end, the solution to the game involves imagining the Island as a metaphor, just as the solution to McGoohan’s original vision for the TV show involved approaching the Village as metaphor.

SPOILERS FOLLOW:

The title, even the cover art seen for The Prisoner 2, point you to the idea that the Apple IIe itself is your prison. As Mullich told Tea Leaves:

While [Edu-Ware] realized that it was a groundbreaking game, there were concerned that I had designed it so that you could win the game from the beginning if you knew what to do: visit the Caretaker and tell him “The Island is just a computer game.” I argued that it was thematically imperative that you could win the game from the beginning, since your “imprisonment” was entirely due to the fact that you were freely choosing to spend your time playing this computer game. We argued all night about it, and I threatened to quit if it was changed, and so the game was released intact.

If you’re interested in playing the games, there are options available. A disk image of The Prisoner is available on VintageGaming.org, which also offers a design manual authored by Mullich for The Prisoner 2. The disk image can be opened using an Apple IIe emulator, which are available in abundance via a simple Google search. The sequel is available for play on the Virtual Apple 2 website.

Film scholar and editor of RogerEbert.com Jim Emerson re-posted this fantastic video essay that analyzes, shot-by-shot (as a former English major, I’d call this a “close reading”), the opening sequence of The Prisoner. The depth of analysis that Emerson is able to achieve with the short sequence verifies what most fans have suspected: that The Prisoner is best when actively watched, and not just looked at, as most other television shows.

A few journal articles, some of which offer links to full text, some of which only have excerpts or abstracts:

Bidlingmeyer, L.M. (2007). Agent + image: How the television image destabilizes identity in TV spy series. Master’s Dissertation, MIT Comparative Studies. [PDF]

Excerpt:

…The repeated use of “pure” geometric forms announced an additional level of formal Modernism that challenged the naturalism of the on-location adventure series, suggesting that the program should be “read” on the level of the symbolic. For example, forced perspective and a single, central vanishing point were consistently used to create pyramid-shaped compositions out of stairways, halls, and roads, communicated more directly by architectural elements like the flat pyramid behind the speaker’s chair in the town hall. Likewise, circles — the sinister “rover” sentinels (actually white weather balloons), the round, flashing mechanical “eye” of Number 1, the brain-washing lamp over 6’s bed, the entire dome of Number 2’s chamber complete with round Eero Aarnio chair ascending from a circular hole in the floor — proliferated throughout the series. Among conventional-looking scenes of dialog and action were inserted shots that isolated and distilled objects from their contexts, abstracting their surroundings to reveal these items’ symbolic import. An entire modernist architectural infrastructure, complete with spare and geometrically-perfect tunnels, antechambers, and high-tech control rooms, was implied to lie behind the postmodern architectural pastiche of William Henry Clough’s Hotel Portmeirion, which comprised the series’ exterior.

Corcos, C.A. (2001). “I am not a number! I am a free man!”: physical and psychological imprisonment in science fiction. Legal Studies Forum. 25.

Excerpt:

The use of language in The Prisoner limits the hero’s ability to contest what is presented as reality. Places do not have distinctive names; they are “the town hall,” or “the store.” The only individualism allowed is that of the Village itself (it is the only Village and represents the bounds of the universe) and of the villagers’ individual names: for the time that they are in the Village, people have unique numbers. For the inhabitants of the Village, the Prisoner is Number Six. For us, the viewers, he is the Prisoner. He is the only prisoner, because he is the only individual who knows he is imprisoned–that there is a world outside. He believes that he once lived there, and that he was (relatively) free, and that he can return. He does not believe that he dreamed it, any more than he believes, like Pedro Calderon de la Barca’s hero in La Vida Es Sueño, that his current presence in the Village is a dream. It is an open question whether there are any inhabitants of the Village who are not window-dressing; if there are, they are remarkably good at keeping secrets. If at least some of the inhabitants of the Village are also prisoners, Number Six is doubly alone, since he never connects with any of them. Thus, while others may also be prisoners and have their own imprisonment stories, his story is truly individual and he is truly isolated.

Morreale, J. (2006). The spectacle of The Prisoner. Television & New Media. 7:2, 216-226.

Excerpt:

The Prisoner presaged Debord’s warning of the dominance of the spectacle, and it affirmed Debord’s pessimistic conclusion, which arrived twenty years later in his Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, that there is no free agency, no place to escape. Debord asserted that as we consume the object-images that circulate, we become part of, and thus unable to resist, the entire economic ecology that is the society of the spectacle. While The Prisoner’s formal and thematic structures attempt to interpolate active viewers, its narrative conclusion and its subsequent fate as a commodified “cult”vtext consumed by devotees ultimately suggest that it is impossible to resist. Just as the final episode’s denouement implied that the prisoner could not escape the society in which he was produced, The Prisoner as a televisual text could not escape its institutional constraints nor could it stand outside of the spectacle to critique it. The Prisoner became imprisoned by the spectacle–it became an object of consumption with “special” status–the very thing it was attempting to escape/critique. It demonstrates the way that detourned images are reappropriated and reassimilated back into the spectacle they initially attempted to disrupt.

Woodman, B.J. (2005). Escaping genre’s village: Fluidity and genre mixing in television’s The Prisoner. Journal of Popular Culture. 38:5, 938-956.

Excerpt:

When examining the “Living in Harmony” episode of The Prisoner, it quickly becomes apparent how complexly different genres can be combined on television. In this Western-themed installment, the show is able to move beyond its normal association with the spy and science fiction genres by playfully combining Western themes and structures into the original format of the show. When examined according to text, production, audience, and social context, the complexity of such a mixing of genres becomes more apparent. Careful scrutiny of an episode’s use of genre from many different angles reveals that simple manipulations of genre can have a sizeable impact on the understanding of an individual episode. Such a use of genre can confound viewers, express the makers’ political concerns, and challenge the cultural status quo. Thus, by simply inserting another genre into the already hybrid Prisoner format, the series’ overarching themes and meanings are explored in new and effective ways.

Girl Who Was Death Spectrum ZX Cover

As with the Prisoner games released for the Apple IIe that we discussed last week, I’d never heard of the following games, nor even the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, until I did some Googling.

The ZX Spectrum is apparently the first mainstream home computer in the UK, was easy to program, and stored games and software on cassette tape cartridges. I believe it to be similar in capabilities and time of release to the Commodore 64 I enjoyed as a kid.

A number of Prisoner text-based adventures, of the open door / get item variety were released on the Spectrum, and thanks to website World of Spectrum, most of them are now playable online!

In chronological order, with as much info as I’ve been able to dig up on them:

The Prisoner (Bradbury) Loading Screen

Date Unknown – The Prisoner – Carol & Paul Bradbury (Text adventure with illustrations)

World of Spectrum info. page

World of Spectrum gameplay page

The Prisoner (Flame) Loading Screen

1984 – The Prisoner – Flame Software (Text adventure with illustrations)

World of Spectrum info page

Comments from the author, Stephen Preston:

Having watched the Prisoner repeats on the new Channel 4 in 1984, I became inspired to write a game based on the series. The format suited the adventure game very well – an enclosed island from which you must escape. What was different about this game from other adventures though was it had rather a lot of complex discussion about freedom and individuality mixed into the “take plank, use plank on hole” type cliches. Unsurprisingly, the concept and solution to the game was actually written by my dad, upon which I coded it into the final product. As such it is a rather peculiar game with many odd moments that baffle and then surprise, however the solution is best kept close at hand as the game is incredibly difficult to solve, therefore I should pay a visit to my attic to get the solution for you guys if you ever fancy meeting “Number One”! If the solution is listed, you’ll know I’ve done it!

Game map from the author, Stephen Preston, at World of Spectrum

Hints and walkthrough at The Tipshop.

Scanned instructions from World of Spectrum

World of Spectrum gameplay page.

The Prisoner (Shailes) Loading Screen

1985 – The Prisoner – Spoof Software (Text adventure)

Written by Francis A. Shailes, additional design by Gregory D. Shailes

World of Spectrum info page

World of Spectrum gameplay page

Hints and walkthrough at The Tipshop (might not be accurate — I saw no mention of the need to regularly eat or ways to deal with darkness)

Review from Sinclair User Magazine

Review from Computer & Video Games Magazine

Number 6 in the Village Loading Screen

1987 – Number Six in the Village – P.R. Software (Text adventure)

World of Spectrum info page

World of Spectrum gameplay page

World of Spectrum gameplay page for second edition

Game map from World of Spectrum

Hints and walkthrough from the Tipshop

Scanned instructions from World of Spectrum

The Girl Who Was Death Loading Screen

1987 – The Girl Who Was Death – Stephen Preston (Text adventure with illustrations)

Based on the single episode from the Prisoner that was taken from an old Danger Man script

Comment from author, Stephen Preston:

This adventure is probably my best achievement and was actually written over 18 months without much break. The game got so large that it had to be divided into two parts, with a data loader allowing the user to bring his time used and inventory over from part 1. Originally each part was on either side of a cassette. Overall the game added up to something like 92K of data, huge at the time! The game was positively reviewed by a couple of magazines at the time, but the greatest thing for me was beating the Scott Adams score for his latest adventure – for it was Adventureland on the Vic 20 (owned by Gareth Davies!) back in 1981 that first introduced me to the concept of the adventure game, one which I found thoroughly exciting. Looking back, the game could have been a lot better. It is linear in its strategy, and follows the adventure of the Prisoner episode it is based on very strictly. As such it is atmospheric and faithful, but loses flexibility and mystery. The input syntax is also a little limiting. Despite all this, it retain a lot of charm and proved popular with fans of the series.

World of Spectrum info page

Game instructions from World of Spectrum

World of Spectrum gameplay page

Walkthrough from the Tipshop

Review from Crash Magazine

Review from Sinclair Magazine

Posting may be slow and sporadic next week, as I’ve got a work project that’s under tight deadline. Should be a big post Monday though. Stay tuned!

Here in the meantime is The Prisoner Companion, a documentary that I believe was also included with the A&E Prisoner Megaset:

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.