| The Prisoner: Shattered Visage | |
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The Prisoner: Shattered Visage collected edition. |
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| Author(s) | Dean Motter and Mark Askwith |
| Illustrator | Dean Motter |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Tie-in |
| Publisher | DC Comics |
| Publication date | 1988-1989 (individual issues) 1990 (collected edition) |
| Media type | Print (paperback) |
| Pages | 208 |
| ISBN | 978-0930289539 |
| OCLC Number | 26969478 |
The Prisoner: Shattered Visage is a four-issue comic book mini-series based on The Prisoner, the 1967 television series starring Patrick McGoohan. The name is a reference to Percy Shelley's famous poem Ozymandias, which forms part of the introduction.
The series was illustrated by Mister X creator Dean Motter and co-written with Mark Askwith. It was later collected as a 208 page trade paperback, with the addition of a new prologue.[1]
Contents |
Set twenty years after the final episode of the television series, Shattered Visage follows former secret agent Alice Drake as she is shipwrecked on the shores of the Village and encounters an aged, psychologically scarred Number Six. While the decades-old conflict unfolds between Six and Number Two (as played by Leo McKern in the TV series), secret agents in London have their own plans regarding the intelligence mine that is The Village, as well as the secret lying at its very core.
The trade paperback included a two-page text piece that explained the surreal final episode, "Fall Out" as drug-enhanced psychodrama designed to break Number Six. However, the story itself regards the episode series as a pivotal point of characterization, as opposed to dismissing it entirely.
Patrick McGoohan and ITC Entertainment subjected the story and art to a thorough evaluation. The likenesses of McGoohan and Leo McKern were featured for their characters’ returns. According to Dean Motter, the notoriously critical McGoohan "didn't hate" the series while McKern was flattered to be a "comic book villain" for the first time.
In London, Alice Drake, adventurer, travel book writer and former secret agent, prepares to embark upon a round-the-world sailing expedition on her boat, the Vorpal Blade. Her daughter, Meagan, is left in the care of her estranged husband and a boarding school.
Alice's husband, Thomas Drake, is a secret service officer concerned about the man known as Number Two. Number Two has written a tell-all book (The Village Idiot) about the Village, the retirement home for spies, which Thomas rewrote to obscure and remove classified information. Number Two was jailed for violating the Official Secrets Act, but his twenty year sentence is up and he's being released. Thomas fears that Number Two will return to the Village, and that what he does there will break open the secrecy of British covert operations.
Alice begins her sea voyage, but she runs into a storm. Her ship is washed onto the shores of an island, which appears to be an evacuated, abandoned holiday resort. (Earlier scenes showed Thomas Drake and an associate taking efforts to reprogram Alice's navigational computer, and later scenes reveal they intended for her to sail by The Village as an advance scout.) Seeking help, Alice explores the Village. She enters the Number 2 house and finds a giant domed room. In the oval-shaped center chair sits a bearded man, who wears a black suit jacket with white lining. He informs her that she is in the Village, and that she is Number Six. This man is the former, original Number Six.
Alice spends the night in the number six living quarters in the Village. The next morning, Number Six takes Alice on a tour. He is a gentle man who lives a solitary life as the sole inhabitant of the Village. He says that the other Villagers were "free to go" while he was "free to stay". While Six is clearly mentally scarred and paranoid, Alice finds him kind as he catches fish and makes them dinner. But when Alice wanders away at night, a giant white sphere (Rover) encloses her and bears her back to the green-domed house to meet the newly-returned Number Two.
Alice recognizes Number Two as the initial author of The Village Idiot. He asks if she's seen Number Six, alleging that he wishes to help Six escape. He describes Number Six as a valuable and powerful man, unjustly punished for actions performed on behalf of his countrymen. "The system imprisoned him, interrogated him, broke him, drove him mad," says Two, recounting the events of the TV series. "The man that would not bend, simply broke. Shattered and alone, he chose a number and christened himself Number One." (Fall Out) Alice asks (echoing the series) who Number One actually was, and Number Two responds that she has missed the point. Two explains: "Here's a man who raged against numbering of any kind. To choose any number, even the number one, was a contradiction. He was caught between belief systems. He had accepted. His days were numbered. He was ours, body and soul. We had won!" Alice is appalled at Two's glee and leaves angrily.
Back in London, Thomas Drake and his partner, an American agent named Lee West, prepare a private expedition to the Village. Despite the lack of official resources that Thomas' superiors are willing to commit, Thomas and Lee are convinced that the Village is at the center of someone's manipulations. There have been a series of recent assassinations of Marconi Electrics scientists - Marconi Electrics was the office building of Number Six's superiors ("Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling"). Later, Thomas' mentor, a Mrs. Butterworth ("Many Happy Returns"), is smothered in her sleep. It seems the former operating staff of The Village are being eliminated.
At night, Number Six and Alice walk through the silent streets of the Village. They are confronted by Number Two. Number Six claims to have known all along that Number Two sent Alice as a scout, pointing out Alice's warder's attitude ("Checkmate") and warder's watch (Six, isolated from modern technology, has noticed Alice's digital watch). Alice protests, but is ignored as Two and Six engage in a fistfight. Disgusted, Alice leaves them to it. Two and Six battle in a raging storm, Two calling Six a coward. He says that Six lost twenty years ago (Fall Out) and won't return to the outside world because he'd have to face defeat. Two says that Six's secret information is now worthless and that Six is nothing. Their fight takes them inside an old mill where Two gains the upper hand. Number Six remains defiant, declaring that he is a free man and his life is his own. Two, choking Six around the neck with both hands, answers, "Then take it!" Both fall out the window of the mill, into the water below.
Shortly afterwards, the door to the number six residence in the Village opens. Number Six enters and begins to cut his beard.
Two separate forces soon enter the Village, although which 'side' either represents is uncertain. First, Thomas and Lee bring a small handful of associates. Shortly afterwards, a group of soldiers sent by Thomas Drake's superior, Director Ross of Operations, follow. It is unclear if Ross has been spurred into action by the assassinations, if he is after Drake for disobeying orders in venturing to the Village, or if he is acting on his own. Lee, Thomas and their detail of troopers arrive first, and enter the home of Number Two, ostensibly seeking the secrets of The Village. In Number Two's domed office, Lee triggers the lift below the center chair, lowering them into the underground chambers. Past the jukebox and the "Well Come" sign is an ornate chair (as seen in Fall Out). Sitting in the chair is a figure who speaks of how he will escape and return to destroy The Village, and how he is a free man (echoing the original Number Six). He rises from the shadows, and is revealed as Number Two, saying that Number Six is dead. Lee and Thomas step past him, climbing lower into vertical tunnels ahead. They descend into clear tubes with the word ORBIT printed on them (also seen in Fall Out). Lee and Thomas are now in the heart of The Village, and find housed there several nuclear missiles, still as usable and deadly as ever.
Lee admonishes Thomas for not recognizing the truth behind the Village. "It was all in the files. You just have to read between the lines," Lee explains. "Power. Control. That's what the Village is all about." Unexpectedly, the launch sequence for the missiles is triggered. Thomas re-emerges into the upper level to find Number Two setting off the missiles without opening the silo doors. The Village is destroyed in a massive explosion, supposedly killing all who remain. Beyond the reach of the flames, however, Alice Drake's boat, apparently repaired, is seen sailing away.
Director Ross, back in London, receives a report that indicates all the assassinations have one man in common: a mysterious, top-hatted man with a mustache. (The observant reader will already have noticed this man in the background throughout various pages of the comic.) When Ross takes the report to his superior, the Colonel, Ross finds that the Colonel has been replaced by the same mustached man (in a manner similar to the TV series' Number Two's being regularly rotated). Ross' report is burnt and his resignation demanded. Later that night, Ross is gassed unconscious in his home. He is loaded into a hearse by two men, to be transported, as was Number Six, to whereabouts unknown. This echoes the start of the TV series.
Number Six and Alice Drake are then seen sitting together on a park bench. Six is clean-shaven and tidily dressed. Alice says that one crucial question remains unanswered: who was Number One? Six answers her, and his own, question thus: "Does the presence of Number Two require the existence of Number One?"
Alice then asks about Number Six's secrets, and he assures her that they are safe: "None of us would be here if they weren't," he tells her with a confident smile. Alice, accepting this, remarks that her digital watch is commonplace these days. Six bids her farewell with the Village salute, saying, "Be seeing you." He leaves as Meagan, Alice's daughter, enters the park and embraces her mother.
This happy reunion is displayed on a video monitor, which is shown to be one screen on a domed ceiling of monitors in a new version of The Village's surveillance centre.
On the final page, this new control room is shown to be housed in London's Palace of Westminster...
Shattered Visage addresses "Fall Out", the surreal, dreamlike final episode of the series, in a variety of ways;
In Shattered Visage Number Two has authored his memoirs entitled The Village Idiot (after a twenty year internment) which became a runaway bestseller despite the security services' attempts to ban it. The Village Idiot is clearly a thinly veiled allusion to ex-MI5 agent Peter Wright's book Spycatcher. There were several attempts by the British Government to ban the publication of Spycatcher, but was successfully published in a number of other countries. It is also safe to assume that significant elements of Spycatcher were censored, as with The Village Idiot where the secret services decide that "you grudgingly divulge a lesser evil in order to protect the greater one".
Topics removed from the fictional The Village Idiot included;
The shared acronym of the first four topics: "POP", pops up in several places during the course of the program. It is the code word referenced in rough drafts of the original series - McGoohan saying that if humans couldn't "put it all together", (that is, bring our human morals up to speed with our technological abilities and overcome the animal within), we would "POP" and destroy ourselves. It featured prominently in an early version of the series' closing credits (which can be seen in the early versions of "Arrival" and "The Chimes of Big Ben") and as a lyric included in the POPular, cryptic and obtuse rhyme "POP Goes the Weasel", a much-used musical-motif in the series, and particularly heavily referenced in the closing two episodes "Once Upon a Time" and Fall Out.
There is currently an audio play series in production based on Shattered Visage.[3]
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