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Episode Studies by Clayton Barr

enik1138
at popapostle-dot-com
The Prisoner: As the Air, Invulnerable The Prisoner
"As the Air, Invulnerable"
Web comic
Written by M. Scott Veach
Art by Mitchell Breitweiser
Published 2009-2010

 

A resident of the Village invents a sister to rescue her.

 

Notes from the Prisoner chronology

 

"As the Air, Invulnerable" takes places after the events of the AMC TV mini-series.

 

Characters appearing or mentioned in this comic

 

Rebecca Meadows/18

Rebecca's mother (mentioned only)

Doctor (number unrevealed)

Veronica Meadows/109 (nickname Vera)

Leo

Dr. Caleb 

 

Didja Know?

 

"As the Air, Invulnerable" was a web comic published on the AMC website in weekly installments from November 2009 through January 2010. Unfortunately, it is no longer available online.

 

The credits of the web comic list Mitchell Breitweiser as the artist of Book 1 and Cliff Richards as the artist of Book 2. However, I have not been able to confirm that a Book 2 was ever published. All 10 chapters of "As the Air, Invulnerable" are presented as Book 1.

 

When loading the chapters of the web comic, a graphic of the spinning tires of a penny-farthing was displayed:

 

penny-farthing

 

 

 

Didja Notice? 

 

The web comic series begins with the following paragraph:
 

The Village is a mysterious town where people have numbers instead of names. Under the leadership of a man known simply as Two, its citizens lead idyllic lives while remaining completely unaware of the outside world.


Viewers of AMC's
The Prisoner learned something truly strange about the Village and its relationship to the real world. The Village was actually created out of the unconscious minds of its inhabitants. It's a shared experience, a group dream. Everyone in The Village lives two lives. Their conscious selves dwell in the real world, while their unconscious selves live in The Village. The Villagers know nothing about their own double lives -- with some exceptions.


Scientists in a corporation named Summakor designed the Village to treat patients with severe psychological dysfunctions. The leader of the town, Two, and his wife M2 were scientists at Summakor. They thought they could heal sick people by placing their unconscious selves in a positive dream environment.

Our story in this graphic novel takes place after the events of the AMC on-air series. The original Two has abandoned his post. A new Two and M2 have taken over, continuing Summakor's experiments with The Village.

 

The main character of this story is 18 (Rebecca Meadows). A Number 18 was Number 6's cohort in the original series novel The Prisoner's Dilemma.

 

In Chapter 2, panel 10, the car driving past 18 and the doctor appears to be a Citroën 2CV6.

 

Chapter 3 reveals that Rebecca was originally from San Francisco.

 

The bridge behind Rebecca and her sister in Chapter 3, panel 2 appears to be the Golden Gate Bridge.

 

Rebecca's sister was diagnosed with schizophrenia when she was still a child. Schizophrenia, despite popular perception, is not related to multiple personality disorder but to a person with confused beliefs about reality, suffers hallucinations, and engages in abnormal social behavior.

 

In panel 3 of Chapter 3, Veronica is being shown a Rorschach ink blot card as part of a Rorschach test. A Rorschach test is a psychological test in which the patient's perceptions of a series in ink blot cards is used to interpret their psychological status. It was developed in 1921 by Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach primarily for use in diagnosing schizophrenia. However, the card held by the doctor here does not appear to be one of the ten standard cards of the Rorschach test.

 

The car seen in panel 4 of Chapter 3 is a Volkswagen Beetle.

 

Rebecca states that she spent four years studying Journalism at Berkeley. This is a reference to the University of California, Berkeley near San Francisco.

 

In panel 12 of Chapter 3, Rebecca has the books Neurolinguistic Programming and Self-Hypnosis Anchors on her study stack in her attempts to prepare for a journey to and from the Village. These appear to be fictitious books. Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is an approach to psychotherapy and changing human behavior developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in the 1970s. Current medical and psychiatric opinion is that NLP is a pseudoscience and does not provide any value to psychiatric or personal development.

 

In panel 4 of Chapter 4, Rebecca and Leo enter Club More in the Village. This club was not seen (or at least not named) in the televised mini-series.

 

In panel 3 of Chapter 5, Rebecca walks past a portrait hanging on the wall in the Village Hall of Records. The face in the portrait is partially obscured, but the body is wearing clothing similar to that of Number 6 in the original Prisoner TV series.

portrait

 

In panel 7 of Chapter 5, Rebecca refers to a quote "Vera" used to say. "Vera" appears to be a nickname for her sister, Veronica.

 

Also in panel 7 of Chapter 5, Rebecca appears to be driving a Lotus Seven automobile, the same car Number 6 drove in his life outside the Village in the original Prisoner TV series.

 

Panel 9 of Chapter 6 reveals that the current CEO of Summakor is a Dr. Caleb. CEO stands for Chief Executive Officer. 

 

There seem to be Joshua trees growing in the desert around the Village in this comic series; they were not seen in the televised episodes.
Joshua tree Joshua tree photo
Joshua tree Joshua tree photo (by Bernard Gagnon on Wikipedia)

 

In panel 3 of Chapter 9, describing her presence in the Village, Rebecca comments on the nursery rhyme about an old lady and a fly. The nursery rhyme is "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly," about an old woman who swallows successively larger animals to get rid of the one before after having accidentally swallowed a fly...finally she dies.

 

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