[1] A highly successful promotional campaign with posters and ads followed for the next year, while Motter and Rivoche struggled to produce an actual issue of Mister X.

When Rivoche quit, Vortex Comics president Bill Marks became more skeptical than ever that Motter would be able to produce the series on time, and decided to turn the work over to the Hernandez brothers.

They missed the deadlines for all but the first issue of the officially bimonthly series, but Bill Marks accepted their tardiness as a necessary consequence of producing a quality comic.

Motter's Vortex issues, along with the covers by Michael Kaluta, Bill Sienkiewicz, Howard Chaykin, Dave McKean, and others, were reprinted in Mister X: The Definitive Collection (Volumes I and II) from iBooks in 2005.

Set in Radiant City, a dystopian municipality influenced by Bauhaus and Fritz Lang's Metropolis, the series concerns a mysterious figure who purports to be its architect.

To accomplish this he remains awake twenty-four hours a day by means of the drug "insomnalin", all the while coping with a Dick Tracy–like rogues gallery and supporting cast including his long-suffering ex-girlfriend Mercedes.

Mister X's influence can be seen and was acknowledged in films like Terry Gilliam's Brazil,[6] Tim Burton's Batman,[7] and Alex Proyas' Dark City.