AUTHOR: DEAN MOTTER, MARK ASKWITH | ARTIST: DEAN MOTTER | PUBLISHER: TITAN | FORMAT: TRADE PAPERBACK | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
In The Prisoner: Shattered Visage, writer and artist Dean Motter, along with co-author, Mark Askwith, explores the story of Number Six and the Village twenty years after the events of the 1967 series’ final episode, Fall Out. Right from the start, the reader is forced to deal with questions upon questions upon questions – what actually happened at the end of Fall Out, who are these new people, what happened to the Village, what became of Number Six, was there actually a Number One? – et cetera, and seemingly ad infinitum.
What it all comes down to is mood, and whether or not the reader wants to venture back into the Village with Number Six, and see what’s become of the place and the man, and whether or not they want more questions and mysteries, or if they want some solid answers. One could argue that, if an enthusiast of The Prisoner wants solid answers, they’ve cast their lot with the wrong fandom.
By merely existing, and revisiting a story nearly twenty years on from its conclusion, Shattered Visage is an exercise in nostalgia. Originally published in 1988, the story of former secret agent Alice Drake and her attempt to circumnavigate the world, only to have forces beyond her control drop her on the shores of the Village, echoes the storyline of the original series, but with certain echoes of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns.
The world’s a more nefarious place, and what once seemed campy and droll has now turned dark and sinister, and while it’s certainly more grown up, it doesn’t end up being nearly as much fun. Everything seems to be dimly-lit or set during a rainstorm, and the plot seems more concerned with asking questions than it does in answering them. Anyone who’s read Motter’s Mister X series will recognise many of these aspects to the story and be unsurprised, but those seeking something a bit more straightforward will be mildly irritated by it all.
While The Prisoner was known for flipping the script, keeping things in the Village gave it a sense of grounding, in that it was like everything was taking place in another world. By moving the action into a larger global context, Shattered Visage becomes just another improbable spy story, without any of the quaint whimsy which makes the original series so enjoyable over fifty years on.
The artwork’s definitely of its time, and has that sketch-like quality which was inherent in so many titles with which this book was contemporary, such as Hellblazer or some such, wherein the characters are drawn with such broad strokes that flipping back and forth is required to determine just which character is which.
