Mister X: style over substance but what a style. Because this is a superhero comic done by Jaime, Gilbert and Mario Hernandez.

It all started as a project by Dean Motter, who was mostly working as an album cover designer at the time but also worked in comics, e.g. on The Sacred and the Profane with Ken Steacy on art. He envisaged Mister X as a ‘sleepless detective’ operating in an art deco superscience city called Radiant City. But he couldn’t do it alone so brought in Paul Rivoch, another illustrator, who helped shape the city and created a series of ads for the upcoming comic, which was to be published by Vortex (who would later publish Chester Brown’s Yummy Fur. But he and Motter had different opinions on what the series should be and he was no longer interested. So editor Ken Steacy, Motter’s old friend, had a brainwave and asked the Los Bros Hernandez if they were interested…

They would last only four issues. A small matter of Vortex not quite paying them as agreed. Nevertheless Mister X continued with another alternative comix future star on art duty: Seth! In all there would be fourteen issues, followed by a second series with an entirely new creative team from Vortex. After Vortex itself closed, there would be reboots, collections and sequel series over the decades, mostly through Dark Horse. It’s all a bit confusing and there doesn’t seem to be a proper collection of all its various incarnations yet. Frustratingly, I have the first three issues but not the fourth it looks like.

If you can find any of those first four issues they are worth seeking out, with a young Jaime Hernandez doing the artwork, as well as backup stories with art by Gilbert. Both of which look as good as they do in Love and Rockets. The remainder of the first series and second Vortex series may be interesting as well, if you’re on the lookout for early work of people who would became known for much different projects much later. One of those ambitious eighties projects that sadly stranded in the mundane problems of getting it published and especially published on time….

Proof positive that superhero costumes don’t actually work on real people.

At least not with some serious alterations. What looks stylish in the comic just looks cheap and tacky on a real person and I can’t imagine how it would look in action in the video Bill Black announces in his editorial.

The Blue Bulleteer is AC Comics’ trademark friendly version of Golden Age superhero Phantom Lady, who was first published by Quality Comics in the forties. When they went out of business in 1956 DC Comics bought their assets including the rights to Phantom Lady and would eventually reintroduce her with a host of other Quality heroes in the 1970s Freedom Fighters series. However in the meantime another publisher, Fox Features had created its own version, having gotten the rights from Iger Studios who had created the Quality Comics version in the first place. It’s the Fox version that would became notorious, as one of the covers was used as an example of how perverted and deranged comics were in Wertham Seduction fo the Innocent… Blame the artist, Matt Baker, for being so good at drawing beautiful women as one of the best of the socalled good girl artists.

AC Comics had started off as Paragon Publications back in 1969 and still exists today. Its formula has remained unchanged over the decades, providing a mixture of reprints of public domain Golden Age series (and ciontinuations of same) with original superhero and other series focusing on “Good Girl Art”. Niche, but it works: their flagship title, Femforce has been in publication since 1985. Not even very many Big Two series can claim the same. Blue Bulleteer is also part of Femforce in her modern guise of Nightveil, relying om magic rather than guns. As the Blue Bulleteer she was active in the forties.

This special celebrates 25 years of her as a character and reprints various Bill Black stories about her. The highlight though is a reprint of one of the Matt Baker’s Phantom Lady stories. There’s also a John Beatty cameo in the Blue Bulleteer photo section at the end of the issue.

Sometimes it’s not difficult to guess what part of a particular assignment interested the artist the most:

Anita en Sugar Jones was the lead feature in seventies Dutch girl comics magazine Anita. It starred Anita, the magazine’s ‘face’ as the assistant to glamourous but vain and egocentrical pop star Sugar Jones. Each episode would have Sugar come up with some scheme to get rich or famous or both and have Anita deal with the fallout. As is immediately clear from this first page, the star of the show is Sugar: both in looks and character she’s far more interesting than the frizzled haired, slightly boring goody two shoes Anita.

Anita at that time never credited the people who worked on their comics, but I knew that these magazines were usually filled with reprints from British IPC series. The artwork meanwhile looks decidedly Spanish. As you may know, Spain in the sixties and seventies produced a huge number of very talented comics artists, whose talents were ‘wasted’ by having to draw rote formulaic features for IPC and other British publishers. Though there are obvious differences between the various artists, their style is always recognisably lusher than their British counterparts, somewhat sexier and looser than the usually stiffer British cartoonist working on these titles.

It turns out my instincts was right: the original British version, simply called Sugar Jones was created and drawn by Rafael Búsom. What’s more, if Claire Napier is right in her review of the Sugar Jones collection published by Rebellion is correct, its co-creator was none other than Pat Mills! (he denies it though.) Regardless, the underlying themes of “class warfare and worker status” that Napier identifies in her review are pure Mills. Her description of the typical Sugar Jones story certainly makes me want to buy the collection:

Every strip Sugar gets an idea, often or always about how she can gain—men, contracts, cache, cash—and Susie sets out a reason or two why pursuing that plan would be harmful to others. Sugar doesn’t care; Sugar goes for it. Susie, with a little help from whoever else is in the strip this week, thwarts it and all of the people poorer and more authentic than Sugar bask in the joy of collaboration, justice and geniality. These are extremely jaunty, momentary reads, perfect for a pause with a beverage or between naps in the sun. They’ve got conviction, tremendous aesthetic value, and no apparent hate in their heart.

A visual treat and with its heart in the right place if somewhat dated attitudes here and there, what’s not to like about Sugar Jones?