Agent X #1
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeAgent X #1 marks the in-continuity debut of Alex Hayden as the amnesiac mercenary Agent X — a character engineered from the narrative wreckage of Deadpool, Nijo, and the Black Swan — and simultaneously launches the ensemble mercenary outfit Agency X, whose roster (Sandi Brandenberg, Taskmaster, and Outlaw) gave the Deadpool corner of Marvel its most ensemble-driven cast to that point. The issue is also the first chapter of Gail Simone's run on the character she co-created, a critically admired if commercially difficult tenure that Den of Geek and others credit with keeping the Deadpool property alive as a cult franchise during a low-sales period that might otherwise have ended the character's publishing run. By threading a genuine identity mystery — is Agent X actually Deadpool? — through an action-comedy framework rendered in UDON's anime-inflected house style, the issue staked out a storytelling approach distinct from anything else Marvel was publishing in 2002. That sustained creative voice eventually contributed to the conditions that made Cable & Deadpool and, years later, Deadpool's mainstream breakthrough possible.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
Marvel retired the long-running Deadpool series after its sales slumped badly, first experimenting with embedded 'miniseries within a series' numbering before deciding to close the title with a final arc and relaunch it from #1 under the X-branded umbrella — the same editorial initiative that transformed Cable into Soldier X and X-Force into X-Statix. Gail Simone, then primarily known as an online comics columnist and humourist, was tapped to write both Deadpool's closing arc and the new series; UDON, a Canadian art collective formed in 2000 whose anime-influenced style had already given Taskmaster a well-received redesign in their 2002 miniseries, provided the art. The title's original publication name was reportedly Deadpool (Agent X), a detail confirmed by the postal ownership statement printed inside issue #9, reflecting how transitional the relaunch truly was. Simone publicly clashed with Marvel's editorial staff during the run and departed after issue #7; after a stretch of fill-in creative teams, she and UDON returned to complete their original vision across issues #13–15.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First full appearance of Agent X (Alex Hayden / Nijo Minamiyori) in his titled role; the character was co-created by writer Gail Simone and penciler Alvin Lee of UDON Studios.
- The issue opens the six-part story arc 'Dead Man's Switch,' in which a scarred, amnesiac man with a regenerative healing factor appears at Sandi Brandenberg's door and insists his name is Alex Hayden — not Wade Wilson.
- Taskmaster (Tony Masters) and Outlaw (Inez Temple) both appear in this issue; Taskmaster is presented as a supporting ally who will train Alex Hayden, while Outlaw's in-series presence here follows her first appearance in Deadpool vol. 1 #65 (May 2002).
- Sandi Brandenberg, who serves as the connective tissue between the Deadpool and Agent X eras, had her own first appearance earlier in 2002 — in the UDON-drawn Taskmaster #1 — and arrives in Agent X #1 already established as a returning supporting character.
- The series was part of a deliberate Marvel editorial initiative to re-brand several titles with an 'X' suffix (also yielding Soldier X and X-Statix) in order to align them more closely with the commercially dominant X-Men franchise.
- UDON Studios — formed in 2000 by Erik Ko, Arnold Tsang, Shane Law, and Ken Siu-Chong — rendered the book in a heavily anime-influenced style that was visually distinctive among Marvel's 2002 output.
- A central narrative hook sustaining the series from issue #1 onward was deliberate ambiguity about whether Agent X was actually Deadpool; Sandi explicitly believes this when she first encounters Alex Hayden on her doorstep.
- The complete Simone/UDON run on both the preceding Deadpool arc and all of Agent X was later collected in the Marvel Epic Collection: Deadpool — Agent X, which gathers Deadpool #65–69 and Agent X #1–15.
Cast · 6 characters
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Reprints
Reprinted in Marvel Manga #11 (2003), Deadpool Classic #9 (2013), Deadpool Classic Omnibus #1 (2016), Deadpool Epic Collection #7 (2025)
Key issues in Agent X
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