Mister X (Vortex)

Mister X
Cover of issue #2 illustrated by Paul Rivoche
Publication information
Publisher	Vortex Comics
Schedule	Monthly
Format	Standard
Publication date(s)	(Series 1) June 1984 - August 1988 (Series 2) April 1989 - March 1990 (Series 3) 1996 Caliber Comics (Series4) 2008–2009 Dark Horse Comics
No. of issues	(Series 1) 14 (Series 2) 13 (Series 3) 4 (Series 4) 4
Creative team
Created by	Dean Motter
Written by	(Series 1) Jaime Hernandez Gilbert Hernandez Mario Hernandez Dean Motter (Series 2) Jeffrey Morgan (Series 3) Deborah Marks (Series 4) Dean Motter
Penciller(s)	Jaime Hernandez Gilbert Hernandez Paul Rivoche Seth (Series 2) Shane Oakley, D'Israeli (Series 4) Dean Motter
Inker(s)	(Series 2) Ken Holewczynski (Series 4) Dean Motter

Mister X was a series of comic books first published in 1983–1990 by Canadian company Vortex Comics. Created by album and book cover designer Dean Motter, it was developed for a year in close collaboration with comic artist and illustrator Paul Rivoche, whose series of poster illustrations stirred up great interest in the project. The series published early work by comic artists who would later emerge as important alternative cartoonists, including Jaime Hernandez, Gilbert Hernandez, Mario Hernandez, Seth, Shane Oakley and D'Israeli.

In the early 1990s, a CD-ROM computer animated version of Volume Two, issues seven and eight, was created by the now-defunct Kinetic Opera Company.

According to creator Dean Motter, "The germ of the idea [for Mister X] goes back to my college days, in journals, in the writing that I was doing back then. I was fascinated by the ideas of sleeplessness and somnambulism."Hardboiled detective stories and silent films were also an influence, and after privately working out details of the story and premise of Mister X for a year, Motter turned to Paul Rivoche to illustrate the work.

A highly successful promotional campaign with posters and ads followed for the next year, while Motter and Rivoche struggled to produce an actual issue of Mister X. When Rivoche quit, Vortex Comics president Bill Marks became more skeptical than ever that Motter would be able to produce the series on time, and decided to turn the work over to the Hernandez brothers. Sales suffered from the long delay; while orders for the originally scheduled shipping date of August 1983 exceeded 40,000 copies, they had dropped to 26,000 copies by the time Mister X #1 was actually published. The first four issues were written and illustrated by Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez, with additional writing by Mario Hernandez. They missed the deadlines for all but the first issue of the officially bimonthly series, but Bill Marks accepted their tardiness as a necessary consequence of producing a quality comic. The Hernandez brothers quit over payment delays from Vortex. Issues 5 through 14 of the series were then written by Motter, with issues 6 through 13 illustrated by Seth.