Secret Agent X-9 - in Comic Books

In Comic Books

The only original comic book story with X-9 produced in the U.S. was a serialized story that ran as a back-up feature in the Flash Gordon book. Five parts of five pages each were published in Flash Gordon #4-8 (1967). The first part ("The Key to Power") was written by Goodwin and drawn by Williamson; this apparently got them the job as creators of the newspaper strip. The other parts of this story were uncredited.

Secret Agent X-9 has had a long history in European comic books. Most notably in the Agent X9 series of comic books in Scandinavia. The magazine started in 1969 under the title X9 in Sweden. As often is the case with European comics, it was an anthology magazine that also included many other comics. In the first issue, X-9 was joined by Jungle Jim and The Phantom. In the early 1970s Modesty Blaise followed and has since been the main comic of the magazine; despite the name Agent X9 the strip Secret Agent X-9 does not appear in every issue. There is a misconception that X9 would have merged with the comic book Agent, where Modesty was published before that, when changing the title to Agent X9. But Agent was cancelled in 1969 and the name change did not happen until 1971 (also Agent X9s editorial staff denied that in a letter column in #3 1984).

The Agent X9 magazine was for a long period published in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland, but today only the Swedish and Norwegian editions prevail.

During the 1980s, the Agent X9 editors requested more Secret Agent X-9 material from King Features since the newspaper stories were quickly published (despite the fact that the strip didn't appear in every issue any more). King Features then began to supply the magazine with exclusive Secret Agent X-9 stories, that have never been published elsewhere. Although these stories were made directly for comic magazines, they were produced in the regular daily strip format. Perhaps so they could have been used for the newspaper strip also, but that never happened. The following produced stories for the Agent X9 magazine:

• Joe Gill (script) and Jack Sparling (art): two stories (1983)
• M. Gill (script) and Miguel A. Repetto (art): 30 stories (1985–1995)
• Dean Davis (script) and John Dixon (art): 16 stories (1997–2003)
• Mike W. Barr (script) and Mike Manley (art): two stories (2007–2009)

Unlike the previous stories, the Barr & Manley stories did not use a classic daily strip format.