One of the great independent comic book series of the '80s was Matt Wagner's 15-part Mage: The Hero Discovered. Published by Comico from February 1984 to December 1986, The Hero Discovered story was a sort of modern retelling of the legend of Camelot. The protagonist, Kevin Matchstick (King Arthur), meets a wizard named Mirth (Merlin), discovers that he has superpowers, and gains a super-powered baseball bat (Excalibur) as he quests to defeat the evil Umbra Sprite.
After the demise of Comico, the series went into limbo until Wagner could regain the rights to his creation. A follow-up series,
Mage: The Hero Defined was published by Image Comics in the '90s, but it failed to take hold with readers and the third series,
Mage: The Hero Denied, has yet to see publication.
Now, however,
Mage could be returning as a feature film.
Lloyd Levin, the producer behind comic-to-film adaptations
Watchmen and
Hellboy, has optioned the rights to
Mage with the intention of turning the indie comic into a major film franchise.
"It has always been a favorite book of mine. It's one of the great untapped comicbooks from the '80s renaissance that also spawned Watchmen
and Batman: Dark Knight.
"
The rights to
Mage had previously been held by Spyglass, with
Zack Snyder attached to direct, but the project never took off.
Wagner said that he is pleased that Levin is taking on the material, citing that the producer's previous efforts have remained relatively faithful to the source material.
"It's a great that Lloyd is taking on this material because his approach is to capture the essence of the original source material. The timing is good, too, because in the past, [filmmakers] tried to fix the material. Now they try to adhere to the material."
Levin is currently looking for a writer to adapt the material.