Mage Volume 1: The Hero Discovered Hardcover – November 23, 2010

Would have done 5 stars had the box had any packing safety, instead of left in the fate of hoping the driver was safe with the package.Good note: book was fine. My memories of old comic book stores came flooding back when I i gently opened amd tilted the frame so as to not crack the spine and the interior scent wafted into my nostrils! Thanks!

I loved this series in the 80's and always remembered it as one of my favorite series. Recently, I was looking for something for my teen-ager to treat now that she's gotten into graphic novels. I ordered it and re-read it before giving it to her. Yes, it's just as good as I remember and the art is fantastic. I wish someone would make a movie of of it. In the meantime, I'm happy to introduce it to my teen. It's great!

I had this entire series in the late 80's and it went missing. I was please to see that I could purchase them altogether and when it arrived I was even more please to see the quality of the product. I highly recommend this to comic fans new and old.

The series that started the cult following -- well done and well packaged.

I remember reading this when it came out. Now my son can catch up on the eternal struggle as well.

Came in great condition

In the 1980s, Matt Wagner's Mage was the absolute cutting edge of comic book culture! For fans of independent comics, the impact of Mage was on par with that of Miller's Dark Knight and Moore's Watchmen. Installments came out in irregular intervals, but were always eagerly awaited by a small but highly dedicated fan base. Wagner's artistic style evolved quickly during the series, starting out as a odd mixture of anime + wrightsonesque hatching, and developing into a more spartan style coupled with beautiful airbrush coloring. The inkers Sam Keith (known for the Maxx) and Rich Rankin (Shuriken) were also fantastic. And while I would highly recommend Mage based on the quality of the art alone, the story is also certainly top-notch. The protagonist (Kevin Matchstick) is an everyman, drawn into a centuries old conflict that he has no personal interest in. So yeah, kind of stereotypical. But Wagner really took his time with character development. To me the more memorable characters were the bad guys - the grackleflints and redcaps, which were kind of reminiscent of the monsters that pop up in Hellboy. Besides innovative artistic styles and a focus on the supernatural (over superheroes), arguably the secret sauce of both Hellboy and Mage was simple creativity, developing some truly original characters and and engaging storylines like nothing you've seen before. In fact, my suspicion is that this series would appeal to the same demographic that appreciate Mignola's Hellboy comic.

This is a great, 5 star series, and the content and all the extras are GREAT, but this particular edition is not great (I'm not kidding - 1.5-2 stars). The art reproduction is sub-standard, with some pages looking like they were scanned from printed comics. The glossy paper stock kind of messes up the delicate color work, and there is missing text from word balloons and typos in the text pieces. A terrible presentation of a landmark comic work