Review by Frank Plowright

For smuggling food to starving people in a war zone Harry is charged with treason and sentenced to twenty years on a prison satellite, where his sentence becomes his name. Transported to a facility housing thousands of others, he’s told the only rules are to obey the guards and not to escape.

In the early 1980s Alan Davis’ first series for 2000AD was the commission enabling him to become a full time artist, so we can all be grateful for that, but Gerry Finley-Day’s SF action plot never transcends the obvious. Consider the elements common to any prison break story, and one by one they all manifest from the brutal guard to the inmate driven insane by their confinement. David Bishop’s entertaining Thrill Power Overload reveals the scripts had been commissioned a while previously and considerably reworked to excise daft moments and in order that it all made some sense.

In his introduction Davis reveals the original intention was that he share the art with John Watkiss, who wasn’t able to contribute in the end, so Davis took on the entire strip. Given that he was a relatively new artist, the pages show a steep learning curve, and this isn’t the clean, polished Davis artwork from later years. However, despite a few off figures and strange perspectives, the effort put in still shows, from the complex design of the armoured guards to the number of people he packs into wide shots.

To give Finley-Day credit, there are a couple of good surprises a fair way into the story, but it’s too often the case of leading from one episode to the next with little thought of the bigger picture. The entire story was also reprinted in hardcover as part of the 2000AD Ultimate Collection, and more recently in the hardcover collection The Best of Gerry Finley-Day.