Mage (comics)
Mage is an American superhero comic book written and illustrated by Matt Wagner. Three volumes, each of 15 issues are planned; as of 2014, two have been published.
Publication history
Volume one, The Hero Discovered, was published by Comico from February 1984 to December 1986. Despite advertisements saying that a sequel was "coming soon", The Hero Defined did not appear until 1997, published by Image Comics (Comico had gone bankrupt in 1990, and it had taken some time for Wagner to regain the rights to the series). The third and final volume, The Hero Denied, is planned, but no firm publication schedule fixed.
Wagner wrote and drew both series, with Sam Kieth as inker for part of the first, and Jeromy Cox as colourist for the second.
Plot synopsis
The Hero Discovered follows Kevin Matchstick, an alienated young man who meets a wizard called Mirth and discovers that he, among other things, possesses both a magic baseball bat and superhuman abilities. In the course of the comic, he defeats the nefarious plans of a being called the Umbra Sprite. He ultimately discovers that Mirth is Merlin, the baseball bat is Excalibur, and he is, in some ambiguous way, King Arthur. All the chapter titles are lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet.
