Thursday Story Strip Day.
As you may now I am a big fan of the various Milt Caniff imitators and would love to do a book about them. The hardest part seems to be to get together a good set of stories from Mel Graff's Secret Agent X-9. Graff took over the series in the early forties, leaving Scorchy Smith to the artist he would be compared to for the rest of his life, Frank Robbins. At first his -9 was very much in the Caniff tradition, but through the years he started adding his own touches. In this cross section of his run, you can see his style evolve. A major part of it was when he started using zip-a-tone or krafttint paper somewhere in 1947. In the mid fifties the most typical features of his work were the open or oddly shaped panels he used and the snow scenes in many of his stories. Somewhere in 1960 he left the strip, leaving it to Bob Lubbers, who continued it as Bob Lewis. When the switch actually took place I cannot tell. I have added a couple of very small strips from January 1960 that seem to be by Graff but are unsigned. They may already be by Lubbers, imitation Graff. If so, he must have done them immediately after pinch hitting for a couple of months on The Saint (where he was followed first by Greg Fleissel and later, signed, by Doug Wildey. While at the same time continuing the Sunday and daily strips of his own series Long Sam. The clips come from various sources to the quality differs.
