Bob Lubbers - Secret Agent X-9 - Another Femme Fatale 1963

If you really want to know more about Bob Lubbers, please look at my listing for the 1966 Secret Agent strip.

To summarize how he got to this point, Lubbers was sharing a studio with Stan Drake and John Celardo in the 1950s and decided to switch from comic books to newspaper strips. He was quickly hired by United Feature Syndicate to replace Nick Cardy on the daily strip, and Burne Hogarth on the Sunday 'Tarzan' strip. Lubbers did both strips from July 1950 through August 1954 before the strip was turned over to studio mate John Celardo.

On 31 May 1954, Lubbers was assigned art duties on a new comic series scripted by Al Capp, titled 'Long Sam', syndicated by United Features. This was a female Li’l Abner, a pretty young hillbilly woman raised in the mountains living with a feisty mother, and very naïve regarding the outside world.

In 1959, Lubbers ghosted the Leslie Charteris' antihero 'The Saint', John Cullen Murphy's 'Big Ben Bolt', and Frank Godwin's 'Rusty Riley'. Then, in March 1960, Lubber succeeded Mel Graff as writer and artist of the 'Secret Agent X-9' detective comic, originally created by Alex Raymond and Dashiell Hammett in 1934. Lubbers drew the comic under the pseudonym "Bob Lewis". Lubbers was later succeeded by Al Williamson in January 1967.

Lubbers left on to create his own comic strip, “Robin Malone”, which allowed him to showcase his talent for drawing sexy girls. He continued to do work for comics from the 1960s – 1980s as well as drawing storyboards for television ad agencies. He retired in 1989, and passed away in his sleep on 8 July 2017, at the age of 95.

This is a Secret Agent X-9 daily dated Sept 18 1963 featuring another sultry siren, the evil Tanya; a femme fatele if I ever saw one. Tanya has kidnapped Yagova, a spy who was planning to turn over information to Phil Corrigan. Like a lot of Lubber's strips, it is the pretty girl that is the drawing card... however I will include a second strip to the buyer from a month earlier (12 August 1963) in the story where Corrigan is waiting for Yagova to get off a plane in New York City.

The strip was produced in ink over graphite This strip has an image area of 16.5" x 5" on a larger 18 x 5.75" piece of 2-ply Craftint board. Craftint was an alternative to zip-a-tone to provide background textures for the strips. The art is signed "Bob Lewis" and dated in the last panel.

As usual with me, shipping is not included in the price and must be paid by the buyer. I prefer checks or money orders. If you need to use PayPal, I need payment sent as a "gift" or via "Friends and Family". I apologize in advance if that is an inconvenience,

I have been asked if I will ship to Europe... I will, but it is expensive and if you need to use PayPal for an international transaction I warn that PayPal requires items of this value to be insured.