Harry Thompson

Harry Thompson is the protagonist of the 2000 AD series Harry Twenty on the High Rock. In 2060 AD he was sentenced to twenty years on the orbiting maximum security prison called the High Rock for smuggling food to starving civilians. Upon arrival Harry was horrified by the High Rock's brutal and dehumanising regime which stripped prisoners of all rights and even of their family names, turning him from Harry Thompson into Harry Twenty. Outwardly complying with the prison's staff, including the racist Guard Pusser and the guards' sadistic leader Chief Thrower, he inwardly burned with defiance.

Hooking up with fellow prisoners Genghis Eighteen and the slightly mad Old Ben Ninety, Harry began plotting his escape. This involved performing an uncannily accurate impersonation of Twenty-One Toady, the prison sneak. Although Harry did make it back to Earth, he was eventually betrayed by Old Ben, who turned out to be an android spy planted by the sinister Warden Worldwise. Genghis was killed in the abortive escape attempt scuppered by the android, but after striking a temporary alliance with the vicious Big Red One (a prisoner sentenced to one hundred years for multiple murders), Twenty managed to lead an uprising which deposed the Warden and his thugs. During the insurrection Big Red One tried to kill Twenty, but was instead killed by the Warden.

The High Rock was knocked out of Earth orbit but, with a self-sustaining environment and twenty years' worth of supplies, Harry believed the prisoners now stood a chance of building a new life somewhere else (he mentioned some rebels living on Mars). Harry also proclaimed that no longer would the prisoners be numbers: "The name's Thompson," he said. "Harry Thompson."

It was later revealed that the High Rock ended up apparently crash landing on an a planet far from known space, inhabited by various forms of animal life, many of them hostile. There, Harry and his comrades carved out a new life for themselves until the arrival of Frontiersman Ajax Bloodthirsty in 2092. By this time, Harry's face was marked by a scar which duplicated the scar on the face of the late Warden Worldwise. (However, although Harry had been blinded in the same eye as the Warden, he did not wear an eye patch. Perhaps he thought that that would be taking the resemblance too far.)

Powers and abilities[]

Abilities

Optimism in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds; unarmed combat.

Strength level

Human male who gets regular exercise (in prison gym).

Weaknesses

Can't tell when one of his cellmates is an android.

Paraphernalia[]

Equipment

Stolen from prison workshop.

Transportation

D.I.Y. escape capsule.

Weapons

Electro-prod ('borrowed' from guard); guns from prison armoury; riot cannon; High Rock gun turret.

Trivia[]

Harry Twenty briefly resurfaced in the series Armoured Gideon along with several other former 2000 AD stars, but this appearance was almost certainly apocryphal. He eventually returned in 2015 in the one-off story 'Death Rock'.
Harry seems to have been a fundamentally decent man. He once stopped a gang of angry prisoners from attacking two guards, on the grounds that it would be unfair to assault the guards while they were unconscious.

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