Number Six (The Prisoner) - Shattered Visage

In the late 1980s, DC Comics published Shattered Visage, a four-issue comic book mini-series based on The Prisoner, drawn by Mister X creator Dean Motter and co-written with Mark Askwith. Taking place twenty years after the TV series, a shipwrecked woman named Alice Drake is washed up on the shores of the Village. She comes across an older, bearded Number Six. Six is a gentle man of a fragmented psyche, mentally scarred and withdrawn, living a solitary life as the single inhabitant of the Village. He says that the other villagers were "free to go" while he was "free to stay" and describes his fear of societal conditioning and conformity. While Six is obviously traumatised and an isolationist, Alice nevertheless finds him kind as he puts her up in his old number six residence, takes her for a tour of the Village, catches fish and makes them dinner.

Later, Alice encounters Number Two (this is the Number Two portrayed by Leo McKern in three episodes), who speaks of Six as a man of many talents and tremendous influence, who was punished as an individual for actions he was made to perform on behalf of all his countrymen. Two claims that Six was imprisoned, interrogated, and eventually broken for the secrets he contained. According to this version of events, what is seen onscreen in "Fall Out", the last episode, is a drug-enhanced psycho drama, in which Six was lauded for his individuality and thus granted a number of his preference—Number One. The paradox that Six was the only individual and therefore Number One, apparently broke Six's mind. Number Six never left the Village, choosing to remain.

In a later confrontation between Two and Six that leads to a fistfight, Two calls Six a coward, saying that Six lost twenty years ago and won't return to the outside world because then he'd have to face defeat. Two adds that Six's secrets are out of date and that Six is nothing. Their fight takes them inside an old mill as a pumelled Number Six declares that he is a free man and his life is his own. Two, choking Six around the neck with both hands, answers, "Then take it!" Both fall out the window of the mill, into the water below. Shortly afterwards, Number Six returns to his old place of residence in the Village, and begins to shave his beard.

At the end of the story, Number Six and Alice Drake have returned to London. Six is clean-shaven and tidily dressed. Alice asks Six who Number One was. Six asks in reply, "Does the presence of Number Two require the existence of Number One?" He assures her that the secrets the Village sought from him are safe. "None of us would be here if they weren't," he says with a confident smile.

The character name "Alice Drake" is a reference to John Drake, but the mini-series otherwise stays away from the "Is Number Six John Drake?" question.