One of comics’ oldest spies is coming out of retirement. Former DC Comics publisher Dan DiDio and artist Tom Derenick are launching Secret Agent X-9 #1 from Mad Cave Studios on Jan. 27, 2027, according to the publisher’s January solicitations published by Bleeding Cool.
Secret Agent X-9 began in 1934 as a newspaper strip created by Dashiell Hammett, the author of The Maltese Falcon, and Alex Raymond, who had just launched Flash Gordon. It starred an unnamed agent working for a shadowy agency, and the strip ran for more than 60 years. The new series moves the agent, Phil Corrigan, into the present day.
In the first issue, a failed assassination attempt drags the retired super-spy back into the shadows. He is forced into an uneasy alliance with a younger operative to hunt Pendulum, a shadow network that manipulates both extremes of the political spectrum to keep the world in perpetual chaos. Mad Cave promises old villains, new allies and surprise settings. Mike Perkins draws the main cover, and the issue is $4.99.
Mad Cave is also collecting one of the character’s best-loved eras. Secret Agent X-9 Classic Collection Vol. 1 is a $49.99 hardcover arriving Jan. 13 that gathers the first two years of the run by writer Archie Goodwin and artist Al Williamson, who took over the strip in the 1960s and renamed it Secret Agent Corrigan.
DiDio spent years running DC as co-publisher and then publisher, and since leaving the company in 2020 he has worked on a mix of creator-owned and revival projects. Derenick is a longtime superhero artist, and the pairing gives the classic strip a modern spy-action spin.
The rest of Mad Cave’s January slate includes Christopher Golden and Amber Benson’s Irish folk horror series The Heir, which launches Jan. 13 with a Jamie McKelvie cover. Joe Corallo and Meghan Hetrick’s Ruth Roche: The Phantom Hand of Comics, a $29.99 hardcover about the overlooked Golden Age writer, editor and business partner of Jerry Iger, lands Jan. 27. A new quarterly Speed Racer: Tales From the Road one-shot tells the origin of Racer X’s partner Hellkitten.
