The High Rock is "a gigantic top-security satellite prison crammed with 10,000 of the hardest, most vicious criminals from the world below".1 Well, that's the hype. The reality is that you can be sent there by the military dictatorships who rule the Earth of the future simply for refusing to sell them your family land, like Genghis Eighteen, or for smuggling food to starving civilians, like Harry Twenty. Once on the High Rock, your surname is replaced by the number of years you are serving (e.g. Big Red One is serving one hundred years for multiple murders). That's why the guards, or 'slugs' (led by the sadistic Chief Thrower), refer to you and the other prisoners as 'numbers'.
If you lay a finger on a slug, you join the 'heavenly bodies': frozen corpses orbiting the satellite, mouths stretched wide in a final scream of terror or despair, ice-coated skin glinting in the Earth-light. And for lesser offences you could join the punishment detail cleaning the waste vents on the High Rock's surface, only a thin spacesuit protecting you from the heart-stopping cold. In fact, even if you keep your nose clean and cringe and grovel for all you're worth, like Twenty-One Toady, a racist like Guard Pusser might put you on punishment detail anyway because he doesn't like the look of your face.
Your food is soya-slop and your recreation consists of stints in the prison's gym, workshop or library. Your burning hatred of this celestial Hell and its chilling overseer, Warden Worldwise, means that as soon as you arrive you start planning how to leave. Your cellmate, Ben Ninety, claims to be the first number to have been imprisoned on the High Rock and his in-depth knowledge will be invaluable to your escape plan — but he may not be all that he seems...
Of course, in the event of your escape plan failing you could always start an insurrection, take over the High Rock and fly it away to somewhere more congenial. You only have twenty years' worth of supplies, but with a bit of luck that'll give you long enough to reach "the rebel colonies on Mars" (2000 AD prog 307). If not, two decades of soya-slop and situational homosexuality beckon.
Trivia[]
The High Rock's most recent appearance was in the story Death Rock in 2000 AD Free Comic Book Day Vol 1 5, in which it was revealed to have crashed on an alien planet outside the solar system. It also briefly appeared in the Max Normal story in 2000 AD prog 2015, entitled 'No Comics for Old Men'.