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It’s week two of Comic Book Month here at Little Movie Review, where we recommend better access points to the world of comics than the usual dark and dreary line of Watchmen and Dark Knights. This week, the enigmatic Mister X.

Mister X is considered a landmark work of the creatively explosive independent movement of the ‘8os. It is thought to have broken ground in the type of content that can be shown in comics and the level of design that can be showcased in them. The Gotham City of the ’90s Batman: The Animated Series cartoon, which has come to define how most people envision the city, was clearly… uh, let’s say “inspired” by Mister X’s Art Deco- and Expressionist-inspired Radiant City, as the images above and after the break deftly illustrate.

Mister X has one of the most intrinsically cool setups I’ve ever heard. It goes like this; Radiant City was designed with a process known as “psychetecture”, which would subtly influence is residents to lead happy and fulfilled lives. A kind of psychological feng shui. But the plans were taken out of the control of the lead architect halfway through production, and the subtle changes made to the layout have turned it into a nightmare city full of unhinged inhabitants (you can see one plummeting to his doom in the image below). The architect was so disturbed by this turn of events that he dropped off the map for a period of time, only to come back as a pale, gaunt, sleepless figure known only as Mr. X, determined to somehow set things right.

That’s a high premise to live up to and, to be completely honest, Mister X never quite has reached that promise. The first four issues remain the best, being written by series creator Dean Motter and illustrated by the legendary Jamie Hernandez, and are really awesome. But every work seems a little more off the mark since. I definitely do not recommend the recent series published by Dark Horse, but the Return of Mr. X collection houses all the Herandez-drawn issues and can be bought for practically nothing on Amazon. Since that edition is long out of print, and the only in-print alternative costs almost $80, the nice folks at Dark Side Comics here in Sarasota probably can’t help you get your hands on it, but you should stop in and ask them about it anyway.

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