Harry Twenty on the High Rock

Harry Twenty on the High Rock was a serial by writer Gerry Finlay Day and artist Alan Davis which ran in 2000AD from issue ("prog") #287 to #307. It tells the story of Harry Twenty, a man wrongly convicted of a crime he never committed who is sentenced to twenty years on the High Rock, an orbiting space station used as a maximum security prison (it is implied that Twenty is a political prisoner). Prisoners on the High Rock have no rights whatsoever and are stripped of their last name and instead referred to by the number of years on their sentence, hence Harry Twenty and various other characters including Harry's fiery tempered cellmate, the Mexican Genghis Eighteen (who is killed in an escape attempt), the deranged Old Ben Ninety (who is eventually revealed to be an android spy for the Warden) and the brutal Big Red One, a psychopathic killer who has been jailed for one hundred years. Other characters include the sycophantic Twenty-One Toady, the vicious prison guard Pusser and the sinister, eyepatch and cloak wearing Warden Worldwise, who is very much in the spirit of a James Bond villain. It is implied that nobody, regardless of the length of their sentence, ever gets off the High Rock alive since the punishment for most infractions can be death, depending on the whim of the guards. After several failed escape attempts, Harry leads a revolt which leaves the High Rock in the hands of the prisoners but spiralling out of Earth orbit into deep space, albeit with a self sustaining environment and enough supplies to last them all for fifty years; Harry announces that they now have a chance to build a new life for themselves free from the authorities on Earth.