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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:

Didja Notice?
The web comic series begins with the
following paragraph: |
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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.
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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.

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. |
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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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Prisoner Episode Studies