By popular demand, the 2018 Titan Comics Prisoner series...
I chose the Patrick McGoohan photo covers, since that is what it has to live up to. Let's see if it does.
Creative Team: Peter Milligan-writer, Colin Lorimer-art, Simon Bowland-letters, Joana Lafluente-colors, David Leach-editor
Synopsis: Issue 1
Right off the bat, the mystery of who runs the Village is taken off the table, as we are told they are an entity unto themselves...
We start witht he stereotyped modern agent, ala Jason Bourne, bursting out of a Chelsea safe house, on the run. Newspapers list him as a traitor. He hides his face under a hoodie and goes into King's Cross station and changes his appearance in the lavatory. We get our first taste of weirdness there, as a man in a checkerboard suit plays chess at a sink, his board spread out on the counter. Our spy changes, then attacks the man from behind, sedating him, cuffing him and gagging him, leaving him in a stall. He goes to the airport and flies to Tuscany, where he has a villa. he lays low, then starts hallucinating, the result of gas. he flashes back toa mission, with an agent named Carey. They had a fling, which has upset our agent, as he doesn't like to get personal. She brushes it off. They are somewhere in the Middle East and three armed men burst into their room. Dialogue says they carry HK rifles (yet the silhouettes are typical Russian AKs), so they must be freelance. They run and come in contact with others. They use their pre-planned escape routes, but the agent loses sight of Carey. he reports back to the Unit, a section of MI-5 (uh....no..probably not) and his boss brings up the subject of The Village (after naming our agent, Breen). he gives him a briefing of what is known...
They have stolen the official kilogram weight and Einstein's brain, they have no allegiance, abduct agents and trade in information. Carey has knowledge of agents that could prove damaging. Breen suggests he can go in and get her out; they say only one prisoner escaped and went mad. They want him to find her and kill her. He refuses. He quits and burns bridges. He goes to Scotland and disappears, then turns up at a secret facility, infiltrates it, and steals something called Pandora, from ridiculous security...
This is why he is on the run. he wakes up out of his memories, in The Village.
Issue 2
Breen is subject to experiments with virtual reality, reliving his father killing a beloved dog, with No. 2 offering to take him away, if he tells them about Pandora. Breen is called No. 6, he appears before the Assembly, from "Fall Out," refusing to speak. Carey is brought out as a witness and she is in league with the Village....
They present video evidence of his conversation with his boss, Section, and the false treason plot, to get the Village interested. They then bring out Section, who was abducted and talked. Breen promises to make a deal, but the President doesn't believe him. he is marched away and told he has a tracking device implanted below his ribs, which will trigger a heart attack, if he tries to remove it. From the night sky, he is able to determine that the Village is in the Northern Hemisphere.. He is constantly guarded and subjected to Village games. He lulls his guards into a false sense of security, gets them to remove his cuffs and takes them down with martial arts. he takes a pass key. He lets Carey out, after convincing her he is not trying to kill her, then Section, and they attempt to escape. they come across a Double-decker Bus and steal it, even get through a security gate, when they are attacked by Rover...
They stop Rover by hurling something into it (looks like an engine) and continue on, until the bus breaks down. They help themselves to the drivers cheese and pickle sandwiches, when Breen detects a funny texture to it. Section starts asking about Pandora. Breen pulls out a gun and puts it to his head and fires.
Issue 3
It's all a VR simulation, run by No. 2. Breen is subjected to further simulations, where he is analyzed by Sigmund Freud, while Carey shoots him for leaving her to die. No. 4 warns No. 2 that he is pushing too hard and might damage or kill Breen. Breen escapes Freud's office and runs into Rover. Breen breaks down and goes into shock and is removed, with talk of surgery. He is taken to the Zombie Ward, where he is placed with other failures. however, it turns out they are telepathic and they coach him. He comes out of his stupor and attacks the orderlies and a doctor, but is reminded of the trackign device. He forces the doctor to remove it and leaves, when one particular thought says, "Be Seeing You!"
He heads for Carey's quarters and runs into his guard. he takes him down and forces him to swallow the tracking device, then runs to the beach. The guard follows and Rover appears out of the water. It passes Breen by and envelops the guard and takes him into the water. Breen dives in and swims after, as Rover disappears into the seabed...
He discovers a "birthing chamber" for Rover and follows electrical hums to a records room...
A pneumatic tube delivers a message, "Be Seeing You!" he continues looking through records. he finds his own psych profile, which says he is a perfect subject for interrogation, which demonstrates why they are surprised he has resisted. Breen hears gunshots and follows, finding himself in No.2's chambers and Carey sitting in the Ball Chair...
Issue 4
Carey aims her pistol at Breen intending to kill him, when she is hit by an electrical shocks, that fatally wounds her. She sends Breen off with a pass key. He gets another message via pneumatic tube that says employment has been terminated, and an address in London. He departs and encounters two guard, in bowler hats and armed with weaponized umbrellas (wrong show). He defeats them and passes out a door and finds himself outside a large geodesic orb, with cars parked outside, including a Hearse, a Mini-Moke and a Lotus 7. He takes the Lotus. He stops as he sees the globe fade from sight...
Breen heads into London, checks into a cheap hotel, calls a contact and arms himself. Then, he goes looking for Number One Solutions. he finds it and asks for Number One and is shown a records section, with old age pensioners inputting data into punchcards...
He is then shows Number One...
The computer controls everything, making random orders, without bias. It spits out a answer that says Breen has passed the test to be No. 2. Breen refuses and walks out...
Breen heads to the Unit's building and finds Carey and Section standing outside. he diverts to a favorite safe house of Carey's and intercepts her. They fight and she denies ever being in the Village. She reveals that her disappearance was part of the plan to get him to infiltrate The Village. He goes off to question Section. Section is at home, reporting to his Minister when gas hits. He wakes up in the Village and receives a call from No. 2...
Thoughts: Well, it uses the imagery of the Village and the show; but, it lacks the style of it, rather like the remake mini-series. Milligan seems too obsessed with a reason behind the Village, which is the same flaw the mini-series had. It misses the allegorical aspect of the series, and its definite answers strip away the mental exercise and the thematic and philosophical elements of the show. This is the mechanics of the Village, mashed together with spy thrillers from John Le Carre and Robert Ludlum. Milligan even points out that the false disgrace plot is taken from The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, while the "Unit" might as well be The Circus, from the Smiley "Karla Trilogy" of books. This leads to one of the technical problems: MI-5 is tasked with counter-intelligence and internal security, not foreign intelligence. MI-5 runs agents within the UK, attempting to uncover and turn enemy agents and/or domestic terror suspects or plots against the State, from within. They might be tasked with uncovering the Village's influence within the UK; but, MI-6 would handle anything outside the UK, such as the Middle East mission. Now, an operation like this would probably be a joint affair, using the resources of both.
Milligan's definite answers rob this of offering the same mental exercises as McGoohan gave us.
For what it is, it's pretty good; but, I would argue that Shattered Visage
better captured the themes of the original than this does. That is likely because Dean Motter had been dealing in many of the same themes within his own Mister X series. Milligan's influences seem to be, chiefly, Le Carre and the Smiley works, with a dose of Ludlum's Jason Bourne paranoia. In some ways, it reminds me of the Watchmen movie, which I felt captured the look of the comic's images, but not the thematic underpinnings of Moore's writing. same thing here: the trappings of the Village, but not the themes. Oh, sure, it uses the phrases "I am not a number, I am a free man!" and has the same agent resigning plot. It uses the same interrogation techniques; but, it strips away the mystery that lets you think about the issues raised for yourself, which is the true heart of the series. It was all about making you think and come up with your own answers, to be an individual in how you perceived things, rather than spoon feeding it to you. To me, that is where this fails and where I, personally, find that modern society fails.
We do traffic in information; but, we need answers spoon fed to us. We are dependent on Google searches to provide information; but, the information often lacks context and we don't question the information often enough. The rise of the internet has linked society throughout the globe, yet spread more disinformation, fallacies and outright lies than anything and as much as it has made "truth" available. Conspiracy theories spread like wildfires through social media, perceptions are manipulated via imagery taken out of context, people live on their smart phones and other computer devices. They stop thinking through problems themselves, asking questions to discover, and try to figure out the answer for themselves. I see it every day as people throw up their hands at carrying out simple tasks, even when instructions for performing the task are ready available. They would rather wait for and pay someone else to figure it out or do it for them, than read an instruction and perform the task themselves, at a lower cost and with less waiting. They let themselves be constantly bombarded with targeted marketing, give up personal information to corporations with no right to it or need for it, other than to target their products to the person. McGoohan's message was a warning about how society can strip away our identity, if we don't stand fast and resist, mostly by thinking for ourselves.
I think that is what just about every adaptation or continuation has missed: that sense of rebellion against the forces of society that want us to be a cog in the machine. They only see a spy taken to the Village to extract information and the murky world of espionage and counter-espionage, with games of betrayal and exposure. Shattered Visage has it, a bit, in the character of Alice; but, she escapes and moves on, while the Village lives on.
I did find the geodesic orb image to be quite amusing, as my first thought was Disney's Epcot Center. When you visit that place, it does rather feel like you have entered The Village and Disney certainly represents the idea of corporate encroachment upon the lives of individuals, through their marketing strategies and even their political power within the state of Florida, which has protected them against consequences for incidents within their parks and environmental damage to the surrounding areas, as covered by several news agencies in Florida. Substitute the holiday wear with mouse ears and Mickey t-shirts and Princess trappings and you are just trapped in another Village.
I guess that makes Walt Number One, frozen in his cryogenic chamber.
It's true; I saw it on the internet!
Be seeing you!
