We are currently living in a new golden age of Magic publishing. It has been surprisingly rare, in the over thirty years of Magic publishing, that we have had both novels and comic books at the same time. Last time, I talked a bit about Magic's books. Today, let's talk about the history and return of Magic's comics.

Magic: The Gathering - Untold Stories

Late last year marked the return of MTG comics in the form of the Untold Stories anthology series from Dark Horse Comics. The flagship title, Untold Stories - Elspeth, is an adaptation of the story of Theros: Beyond Death. The second announced title features Jace with a mysterious adventure from his past. Future titles will also focus on events from up and down MTG's timeline. These comics are canon, and are meant to highlight important moments from characters' lives or tell a story that was never told, for one reason or another.

A Brief History of Magic Comics

Dark Horse's Untold Stories aren't Magic's first foray into comics, nor even their first partnership with Dark Horse, so let's look back at the comics of the past. Broadly speaking, there's really only been four major eras of Magic comics, although there've been a few corner cases over time.

Magic's comic history starts with Mezlok's Challenge, a short-lived comics from the pages of Wizard's first magazine, The Duelist #2 and 3. It featured art by Mark Poole and was going to provide more lore about Taishar, the creature from Natural Selection. It went nowhere and was cancelled after just a few pages were produced, but a year later in later 1995 we would get Magic's first true comic series.

Armada Comics

The Armada Comics series was, in my opinion, where Magic lore really begins. Things in these comics are still relevant today and it set the tone and a lot of the worldbuilding that would define Magic going forward. Armada Comics was an imprint of Acclaim Entertainment, as part of their transmedia storytelling operation.

Transmedia storytelling is the effort to bring different media expressions (novels, comics, video games, films, etc) together into an aligned and interconnected space. There was a big push for this interconnectedness in the 90s, and so while Acclaim developed the Magic: The Gathering - Battlemage video game, the Armada imprint built a sprawling, loosely interconnected story that would build to the video game as a narrative event.

These comics ran for only two years, from 1995 to 1996, but published an impressive thirty-four issues, including several that were functionally full graphic novels on their own. While some of the comics handled the metanarrative (centering the hero Jared Carthalion and his family lineage), others were simply side stories or attempts to apply a story to early Magic sets that lacked one. Unfortunately, the comics market was collapsing and Acclaim shuttered Armada before their War of the Spark style finale (the aptly titled War of the Planeswalkers) could be published.

If you can find them, I recommend Dakkon Blackblade, Elder Dragons #1-2, Ice Age #1-4, Shandalar #1-2, and Homelands as great examples of what these comics had to offer. Not all of the comics were as good as relevant as the ones I named, but you can also check out the ones starring Jared himself were The Shadow Mage #1-4 and Wayfarer #1-5.

These comics also often came packaged with a 'promo' card of some sort, usually just a regular Magic card inserted into the plastic packaging. They also came with punch-out cardboard counters as a 'backboard' in their packaging. In recent years a lot of LGSs seem to carry at least a few of these comics for displays.

Dark Horse Comics and TopDeck

During the Weatherlight Saga, there were two main comics series. The first was Gerrard's Quest from Dark Horse in 1998, a four part mini-series that retold parts of the Tempest block along as a frame to explore the backstories of the various Weatherlight characters. It wasn't super well received, mostly for the poor artwork inside. It only ran for four issues before cancellation.

Later elements of the Weatherlight Saga were adapted into pretty excellent 'teaser' comics for Wizard's latest magazine, TopDeck. The comics were drawn by Kev Walker and depicted pieces of the Masques and Invasion block stories. These weren't complete stories by themselves, and they ended with the cancellation of the magazine in 2001.

Path of the Planeswalker Comics

In the wake of a big multiversal shake-up in 2008, Wizards began releasing a series of webcomics intended to introduce their new cast of planeswalkers and set up their backstories. Written by the creative team and illustrated by Magic artists, these comics proved popular and ran for three years before finally being cancelled alongside the novels. These comics were available for free online and are still accessible through the wayback machine. They were later collected and sold as a two volume graphic novel entitled Path of the Planeswalker.

These comics are by far the most relevant of any produced, tying directly into the ongoing story and establishing the backstories of the biggest names of the last twenty years of Magic. They're worth the read, even with the headache of needing the wayback machine to do so these days.

IDW Comics

A year after the cancellation of the webcomics, IDW picked up the MTG license. IDW's model for the comics was actually a single serialized story divided into four issue miniseries, starting with the eponymous Magic: The Gathering, and followed up with The Spell Thief, Path of Vengeance, and Theros. All of these comics followed the exploits of Dack Fayden, a thief with the ability to see the history of objects he touches. The series was cancelled on a cliffhanger featuring Dack descending into the Theros Underworld to confront Ashiok. The cliffhanger was never resolved, but both Dack and Ashiok reappeared later in War of the Spark. Dack's home plane of Fiora was later made into the setting for the draft innovation sets Conspiracy and Conspiracy: Take The Crown.

These are personally my favorite Magic comics of all time, with the constantly-over-his-head Dack being my favorite planeswalker for years. A hardcover collection of these stories is currently running for around $100, and the digital versions have been taken offline, unfortunately.

A new series starting in 2018 titled Magic: The Gathering - Chandra was set to coincide with War of the Spark's story, but after large delays between issues and the controversies around War of the Spark - Forsaken, the follow-up series Chandra: Trials of Alara was quietly shelved in 2019.

The IDW comics were also packaged with promo cards featuring card art of whatever the cover of that issue was. Many of these comic arts have since been reprinted, the art being just too good to go to waste.

Boom! Studios

Boom! Studios picked the license up in 2021 with a very different idea. Their series, simply titled Magic, would be set in an alternate continuity where things happened a little differently in War of the Spark. Despite not being canon, the strong characterizations and fun plot lines using very old school Magic villains proved successful, so much so that it wasn't surprising that Jed McKay was hired at Marvel to write The Avengers not long after.

The series ran for twenty-five issues, a four-issue mini-series, and five one-shots over the course of its two year run, tying with Armada for the largest comic series in Magic history. Unfortunately, these too are no longer available digitally, but various collections of the series are still available at MSRP.

Stories Told

And that brings up full circle back to Dark Horse and Magic: The Gathering - Untold Stories. Elspeth wraps up soon and Jace picks up soon after, but the comics won't stop there. Even if neither of those is your cup of tea, there's sure to be a lot of cool Untold Stories on the horizon.