Jack Kirby and Gil Kane’s Unpublished ‘The Prisoner’ Issues to Finally Be Released

Titan Comics isn’t just celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Prisoner with a new comic book series — it’s also planning to officially release the original attempts to bring Patrick McGoohan’s unique vision to the comic medium for the first time, featuring work by legends Jack Kirby and Gil Kane.

The British publisher first announced the new series — by Peter Milligan and Colin Lorimer — last year, with Milligan teasing a story featuring the “successor” to McGoohan’s nameless character from the cult classic television series. That series will launch later this year with the first issue cover by Mike and Laura Allred exclusively revealed above. Additional covers for the issue will come from Lorimer and artist John McCrea.

In July, Titan will also release The Prisoner: Original Art Edition, a hardcover edition of previously unreleased work by Kirby, Kane and writer Steve Englehart from their attempt to adapt the pilot episode of the TV show to comics during the 1970s. In addition to featuring the complete Kirby artwork for his unpublished issue — six pages of which were inked and lettered by his long-term collaborator, Mike Royer — the collection will also feature 18 pages of Kane’s pencils, and the complete script for Kane’s issue by Englehart. 

All of this material was created for Marvel, which had the comic rights to the show in the mid-1970s, but never published anything. The Prisoner would make its comic debut more than a decade later when DC published a sequel, The Prisoner: Shattered Visage.

2018 marks the 50th anniversary of The Prisoner’s debut on U.S. television; the show had aired a year earlier, in 1967, on U.K. network ITV.

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