Thursday, 10 September 2015

THE PRISONER COMIC STRIP BY JACK KIRBY

Yesterday I mentioned that the editor of TV Century 21, Alan Fennell had decided against a comic strip version of The Prisoner, and I speculated how it might have been.

During the mid seventies, Marvel Comics toyed with the idea of producing a Prisoner comic strip, with Stan Lee eventually giving the job to artist, Jack Kirby.

Unfortunately, Stan Lee decided to cancel the project prior to publication. However Jack did  produce a first instalment based on the first episode, 'Arrival', and although some of the artwork was not inked and had incomplete dialogue, temporarily pencilled in, it does give a flavour of what would have been the first Prisoner comic strip.

















Further reading can be found at:
 http://www.twomorrows.com/kirby/articles/11prisoner.html
http://www.forcesofgeek.com/2014/03/read-jack-kirbys-prisoner.html


7 comments:

  1. Its amazing to see Patrick McGoohan get the Fantastic Four treatment Scoop! The Kirby style stands out a mile. Was The Prisoner shown in the States then?

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    1. I believe it was shown in the States, Woodsy. It has to be said that the first page is awful, with Number 6 having arms about 6 feet long.

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    2. Hi guys - you might want to check out "The Prisoner: Shattered Visage" which was a comic strip sequel - well graphic novel I suppose but in 4 parts - set 20 years after the event of the series it's the tale of an agent who is sent in to uncover what really happened in the Village all these years ago. I didn't like it at the time because I suppose I was expecting a re-hash of the TV series but reading it now I reckon it's a pretty darn good follow-up to the story - and it does make a pretty good fist of explaining the events of that final episode "Fall Out"

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    3. Hi BIll, I've got the graphic novel and a couple of the comics. It certainly does have some good points and quite a few nice images from the original TV series. I just not that keen on Dean Motter's spidery artwork. Certainly worth a look though.

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    4. Yeah I know what you mean about the art - not a big fan myself - but the story stands up well I reckon.There's an audio-drama version of sorts based on it here:

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  2. Oops - here it is :http://brokensea.com/theprisoner/
    Be seeing you!

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    1. Thanks for that Bill, I'll give it a listen. Yeah, I do agree with you that the story works well. It does stick to the spies and sci fi side of things which I like, and setting it twenty years after the original events was a good idea.

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