Monsieur X

 

Monsieur X is an interesting anomaly. The character appeared only once, in the “Secret War News” feature of Military Comics. This feature presented itself as depicting real life military stories. The tale in Military #6 (Jan. 1942) promised that it was “based on inside facts gathered from British information bureaus,” but it’s a story that’s hard to believe. 

Written by Al McWilliams, the mysterious Monsieur X was a French freedom fighter. Dashing in his moustache and domino mask, X liberated a German ship filled with British prisoners at Calais, France. With the help of another British ship, they took out a German destroyer. 

The Parisian newspaper Le Petit Journal exclaimed that Monsieur X was lost at sea, but actually, he dove back into the English Channel and swam back to France to further torment the Nazis.

Military Comics #8–13 also featured a French heroine, X of the Underground.

The phrase “Monsieur X” appears throughout French arts and culture. Le Petit Journal is archived online only through 1940; a search yields no evidence of the story represented in McWilliams’ tale. Henri Rousseau painted the Portrait of Monsieur X (Pierre Loti, a novelist who died in 1923). It was also the name used by an erotic photographer of the 1920s-30s. And in 1948, Édith Piaf recorded a song called “Monsieur X.” It is a melancholy song about a beautiful man who wandered in sadness by the Seine.