The second Mage story, Mage: The Hero Defined, is due from Image this year. Its creator, the prolific Matt Wagner, plans to bridge the gap between the classic series Mage: The Hero Discovered and the new series with a special issue called Mage #0.

MANIA: Now American Entertainment is some way involved with putting together Mage #0; how, exactly?
Matt Wagner: It's being offered exclusively through them. That's pretty much a summary of the involvement. They are doing it as a special pack and they are also going to offer it later as a single issue. And they are going to offer a signed edition as well.

Now the whole first part of the Mage trilogy was about Kevin Matchstick discovering that he was a hero, so Mage #0 isn't going to be an origin issue; is it going to be a pre-origin issue?
The second series is called The Hero Defined , so for readers of the first series, it takes off the first series and expands upon Kevin's discovery. But conversely, I've also tried to style this so that you can pick this up and just read it fresh without having to have read the first series. And so fa,r most of the people from Image that have read it claim that it comes off very well. You can tell when in-jokes are being told, but it doesn't interfere with your ability to just enjoy the series fresh from issue #1 or #0 of Hero Defined.

So it's a bridge between the Hero Discovered, and the Hero Defined but it's also a stand alone?
Yeah, a little adventure where Kevin meets the fellow that is his traveling companion at the beginning of issue #1, a fellow named Joe Phat. Whereas the first series is about Kevin's discovery that he is basically the reincarnation of King Arthur, and where most of the supporting characters, both supported, and defended his role as the central hero, in this series he started encountering other people who all have superpowers and who all imagined themselves as some reincarnated hero from the past as well.

So they've all had similar experiences.
For instance Joe Phat is a reincarnation of Hiawatha. There is a character in the first issue who is the reincarnation of Hercules. Later there is a Chinese hero that comes into it. At one point they talk about Prester John, who was a Christian hero. Possibly you'll get the idea that there is this running sub-culture of these fellows who are all superpowered reincarnations, and then they're just guys in ratty T-shirts. So it kind of brings it down to this real human level, as opposed to this grand ... or I should say, it's epic, on an intimate scale.

Okay, that's a good way to put it. And of course the other guys wear Batman T-shirts rather than Captain Marvel...
Well, no. The guy that's Hercules wears a patch on the back of his jean jacket that bears the shape of the Superman emblem, but it's a lion's head. And if you remember your mythology, the lion was kind of Hercules' totem.

Right, the first of his 12 labors, then he wore the head as a trophy thereafter.
Yeah, well Hihawatha's character, he wears a blue T-shirt with a zig zag lightning bolt that goes sideways. And his powers are more based on the senses and speed rather than destructive power.

Finesse rather then force.
Right, and he runs very fast and leaves a blue streak behind him when he runs. That's where his emblem comes from.

Do these guys have a Mirth figure to explain to them what they are up to?
Well, that is the thing. When following the first series, we find out Kevin had traveled around the world for a short while with Mirth, hunting down the supernatural nasties that have gotten out into the world. And one day Mirth just disappeared in his typically enigmatic fashion and left him a prophecy that some day there would be a second Mage for him.

So even though that is somewhere niggling in the back of Kevin's mind, it's not an active quest that he's been on per se. He knows what he's comfortable with now, which is utilizing his bat and the power of Excalibur, and basically really fighting monsters.

Now the supernatural beings are leaking into the world ... but isn't Kevin, in fact, a supernatural being that has leaked into the world?
Yes he is, and that question will come up after a while: is this the end, or just the means to the end? He's wiped out goblins and trolls and all sorts of things but that hasn't really brought him any closer to the goal he imagined when he first took on this role.

And of course he's had to pay a higher price now, with the loss of his friends.
Yeah, and he hasn't necessarily become close to anybody for a while, and now all of a sudden he finds himself surrounded by a crew of compatriots. The difference this time being they all seem to have an agenda; they are not necessarily recognizing him as the King, he's got this power and he's the only one who has a magic power.

But it's still much more a society of equals than the crew of the first one, which was the hero and his companions.
His followers, yes.

So, Mage #0 takes place...?
Mage #0 takes place in the Grand Canyon, where they fight a native American ghost Manitou creature; we are refreshed of Kevin's fear of heights and we're introduced to Joe Phat for the first time.

It's a good place to demonstrate his fear of heights.
Exactly, and they become quick friends.

This is post-Mirth?
Yes.

It will be really refreshing to see these guys after so long. You're coming back to Mage after some time away.
Ten years.

It's been ten years since you've done one, what's that like?
I think I really needed this sort of distance to really give it this sort of treatment; I think if I'd have done it a little earlier it might have been darker then it should've been. It would've been more like Grendel, so I'm glad I've exercised these muscles for ten years and got those demons out. And certainly Mage isn't fluff, it deals with serious mythological issues, and mortality, and those sorts of things, but it's not the horror-fest that Grendel constantly is.

It feels real good to be back with these characters. I said to somebody the other day, I don't have to think about it, normally when I do a story I break it down into thumbnails and kind of a flow chart fashion and then I just kind of pick it up and go page by page. I know kind of what is going to happen on page 15. I kind of know what is going to happen in issue 8. But it's a much more fluid, almost unconscious approach to my craft but less deliberate.

And that's because of your long familiarity with the medium, or have you just progressed as an artist?
You may or may not know, Kevin Matchstick is my thinly veiled fictional alter ego. Actually part of it has to do with that; I'm just doing what feels familiar, so even though I love doing horror fiction and mystery fiction, I don't have much personal experience with that. I've never seen a dead body, I've never seen police reports or police procedure and certainly I've never seen floating people and magic baseball bats as well, but the characters in here are all culled from people that were, and are, very close to me. A lot of the characters are the amalgams of many people, but it's all very familiar territory emotionally for me.

It sounds like you've got the whole Hero Defined arc planned out.
To an extent. I know where it goes, like I said. It's all a journey for me, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel but I don't know each step in getting there. I think that heightens the sense of discovery that is necessary for telling a hero journey like this.

So you don't really find detailed outlines to be useful?
Not with Mage. With others, certainly with Mystery Theatre, it a mystery you got to know the end before you start the beginning. And with Grendel I'm often working several hundred years in advance. Mage is much more from the heart, where the others are much more from my head.

That's interesting, because Grendel doesn't appear to be going anyplace in particular; just growing and mutating and expanding the way real stuff does.
Yeah, right. That's another good analogy: Mage is about growth and Grendel is about wild growth, this cancerous mutation you were just talking about.

Which is growth gone mad.
Right. Grendel has got a lot of potential for growth gone bad and Mage is about growing up whether you want to or not.

Do you think you're in a better position now to see the whole Hero Defined arc through, and the comic company won't collapse under you like it did last time?
Well, I'm with Image and they seem to have pretty strong footing, regardless of the Liefeld fluctuations. But yeah, I feel pretty good. It's basically a self-publishing effort over there. I'm kind of at my own keel and pace, and especially for this, that is very good. I could not stand to have an editor breathing down my neck on this sort of thing, when generally I'm good at the sort of pressure on other projects.

Now, when you did the first Mage series, the Hero Discovered, they gave you a considerable amount of leeway I would imagine, yes?
Editorially, yes. No, I don't mean editorial restraints to what I can and can't do, but my own pace. Whereas Image isn't as uptight about that stuff, and they know you're going to get it out. I'm certainly far enough ahead to where issue #1 comes out and you won't see another one for six months: that won't happen. I fully planned for this to be monthly, and it's 15 issues, so it's going to keep me busy for awhile.

That is a break neck pace.
In fact I'm now considering maybe I should get an inker, so...

Really? Would that be preferable to stretching it out to say 2 months per issue?
I don't know. That will be a decision they have to make in a couple of months. The first Mage series was inked by Sam Keith, so I'm not adverse to it and I'm certain you know that the style in Mage is simplistic enough that I am not that upset at the thought of getting an inker.

I was more concerned with securing a colorist that I was very happy with. I'm such a coloring nut that I was concerned with finding someone that would suit me and not over do things. The fellow that I'm working with, Jeremy Cox, who's done a variety of things, most recently, Leave it to Chance, and I think he's a very simple, colorful, very defining sense of color and I'm very happy with everything he's done so far. That's been a big load off my mind. I colored the first series, so I was going to be very picky about this one, but so far he's done a great job.

So when will we be seeing the first issue of Hero Defined?
Ships July 10. I think that issue #0 will be available through American Entertainment about a week before that.

Great, then we can look forward to a steady diet of Kevin and Joe and their buddies from there on.
They are Kirby heroes. but...

Oh, really?
The thing with Mage especially, and the reason I want to try to keep it at this monthly pace and not have all these big gaps between issues, is because each issue is almost like... I always use the analogy of something I say on an MTV special about Heroin addiction and Methadone clinics and this girl said, 'When you get this prescription of heroin they give, it's not like they give you too much, it's almost like they give you too little. ' That is the approach I have with Mage . You are almost to that 'to be continued' page before you realize that you've gotten rolling, and so you still feel that you want more. Not that you didn't get enough, but you definitely want that buzz again.

That is what we call a cruel pace in this business.
I call it a skillful pace.

Well, yes, I'm sure that it is difficult.
But certainly, all that excitement is what drew all of us to comics in the first place. That thrill of, 'oh my, what's going to happen?' These days, people know how to end on a cliff hanger, but they take such damn convoluted methods of getting to it.

I just saw Lost World the other day with my son, and by the end of it you're almost bored with the dinosaurs, you have seen so many of them, and I don't want you to get that way with this.

Do you think it's a different market then it was ten years ago?
Certainly it's a different market and a different industry, but I think it's a very good time for me to hit right now, in that I think people are tired of flash-in-the-pan one-shots; they generally like the accessibility of mini-series, but a mini-series isn't quite enough to really get you involved.

It's like one nice big dinner. That won't keep you healthy for the rest of your life. And I think right now there is this market, and I'm really interested in some of this, "I want to get involved with this but I don't want it to be over in three months. But I also don't want to have to read 45 issues of something just to catch up with what's going on now", and that's why I think it's a good time for this to premiere because again, you can pick it up right off the bat. You could almost pick it up at any issue and catch on to what is going on. There's a definite beginning, middle and end but it stretches over a year and a quarter, that's a good decent chunk of time to get involved with something without committing 20 years of your life to it.

So it's a limited story, but a long one.
That's right.

And the Hero Denied would be some time thereafter, and I must admit that title has me somewhat worried.
See, now I don't want that to take ten years, too. No promises, I must say. I fully intend not to take ten years on that one.

And you already have a fairly detailed idea of what that will be about as well?
No, I don't have much of any idea of what that's going to be about, yet. I will kind of know more about that one as get towards the end of this.

Well, is that going to be the 3rd part of the Campbellian uber-myth of going into the darkness, and facing the beyond which is unknowable, and then coming back to your tribe and showing them something new, something unique that you have brought from the outside?
I would think so, yeah. When I first finished Mage, I was not much aware of Campbell's work and I sat down to read the Hero With a Thousand Faces and boy, the first stage of the Hero Journey is just like a synopsis of the Hero Discovered and I think I'm really getting that the second stage of the Hero Journey with the Hero Defined, so I would bet that yes, I'm headed for the first stage in issue...

No, you're right because in the second phase, he is actually in a supernatural world. Every inhabitant of his world is a superhero. So he's gone from the natural world into the supernatural beyond..
There's a certain rivalry of the heroes. So yeah, I would imagine that's where I'm going, couldn't tell you...

We have tracked down the reprint film for the first series, so we're hopefully going to purchase it back from the people that have it and recolor the entire thing on the computer and hopefully have that out in a single volume for the first time ever.

Boy, that's top news.
I think next spring is the earliest we could probably do that.

Well, you know, although it's nice to adopt a long series as sort of a familiar friend for a year or two, it's also really nice to read it in one volume.
Absolutely, and Mage is one of those that really works as that too, and it's never been in one volume, so that will be very nice to see.

We're working with Graphitti Designs to do action figures. In fact we think we're going to have (with fingers crossed) we should have prototypes by San Diego.

And which one's would those be?
We're going to start with Kevin and Hunter Rose and he's also doing a Madman. When you think about it, there are a lot of supporting characters in Mage. There's about six Grendels right off the bat, without even getting to the villains yet. Madman, you could make Madman like Kenner's made Batman. You could just do 50 different versions of Madman. Nightflyer Madman, Scuba Guy Madman, it could go on and on and on. So I really hope that works out, that looks like it's going to be a lot of fun.

You can have the Grackleflint's elbow spurs emerge and what not.
Yeah. We're actually trying to have Kevin's magic bat light up, so that's going to be a big plus.

I see that you're going to be involved with Doctor Mid-Nite, the guy who's blind in the daytime.
It is Doctor Mid-Nite; it's basically a revamp of that character. It's the same character with the same power but he's in modern day, so we could not make him Charles McNider, who would be 80 or 90 years old and as a matter of fact, they killed him off in Zero Hour. But we updated him to modern day, and he's a guy who's blind and can only see in the dark.

And he's an activist doctor: that's the more interesting thing that we were shooting for. The first issue shows him handing out bleached and sterilized needles to junkies and condoms to hookers on the streets; he's the midnight doctor. He's outside the realm of medical practice from most people's standards.

And when we tell people that, a depressingly typical response is, 'oh man, that means he uses scalpels, right?' And we're like, 'no, he carries a little black bag. He's a healer, not an avenger!' So that's being painted by John K. Snyder III and it's really fabulous work, it's so intricate it's taking a really long time to get it done, but it will be well worth the wait because it will give a whole new light to that character, I guarantee it.

Looking at a lot of painted books, there's usually one big splash panel that has all the rendering. Then the other stuff is quickie stuff, but John's tending to put the same amount of detail into each and every panel which I keep trying to beat out of him. I keep saying, 'John, that beautiful background, it's just too bad I'm going to cover it up with balloons.'

So that is sometime in the indefinite future?
Yeah, I would say sometime next year it will be out. He's about a week away from being done with issue #2 and it's a three issue prestige series.

The only other project I'm involved in right now is Grendel: Black, White and Red. The first issue will be out in either December or January, depending on how quick everything gets done. It's a four issue mini-series, and they are all untold tales of Hunter Rose and they are all written by me and they are in black, white and red. And drawn by a big plethora of just a bunch of great artists. We got Mike Allred, Paul Chadwick, Sam Keith, Tim Sale, Tim Bradstreet, Jason Pearson, Guy Davis, and I'm drawing a blank now..."and many more of today's hottest artists."

That's a wide range of styles too.
I distinctly am trying to write each and every one to match the artist involved, and so far my editors over at Dark Horse seem to think it's really working well. I got a call from the one assistant editor and he was like, 'when I read these, I was thinking that's that guy drawing that .'

So it's not four tales in a row, it's quite a few?
Yeah, it's four issues and there are 5 eight-page stories in each issue.

Any truth to what James Robinson said, about you being involved in the JSA miniseries, someday, down the road?
Yeah, some day when James and I both have space to breathe. That will be... we picture that being a mini-series that will be structured kind of like the old All-Stars in that we would get a different artist to draw each short story, so it wouldn't be the JSA's first adventure, it would be the sum of the events that would lead to their formation. So basically the last page would be the cover to All Star #3 where they are gathered around the table for the first time. So you'd have a Hawkman story, a Dr. Fate story, a Sandman story, etc. Not every issue. Then they would obviously overlap a little bit but we would try and keep it singular until the final issue when events are going too fast and they are all together. It's pretty ambitious.

Well, having seen the Golden Age and your own Sandman, I'm confident, but really eager to see this now.
We both have a pretty genuine affection for these characters and we both work really well together. The pseudo-crossover that we did between Sandman and Starman really worked out well, and it was all based around one or two conversations, then we went our separate ways and it all really melded very nicely.