The first three pages of the proposed MISTER X comic, written by Dean Motter and drawn by Paul Rivoche. This is some of the finest, most stylish "ligne claire" cartooning to ever be produced outside of Belgium. You can see traces of EP Jacobs, Herge, and Yves Challand in these pages, added with a sense of FW Murau and Fritz Lang's grand deco guignol. I never asked Dean or Paul, but I have a suspicion the title character is named for the song "Mister X" from Ultravox's 1980 album Vienna. Mister X first appeared in print on the cover of a little known anthology title called Vortex Comics #2, although Dean had previously used the character on a design he did for an album by Canadian musician Patrick Cowley. Vortex published a series of visually stunning posters to promote the series and those of us reading comics in the early '80s, including Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez, eagerly awaited the first issue. Little did the Hernandez brothers know at the time that they would be the ones writing and drawing the first issue, which debuted in 1984.
