MTG Comics: Who Published Them and Where Story Fans Should Start

Magic: The Gathering comics have come from four publishers. Armada, an imprint of Acclaim, printed the first ones from 1994 to 1996, Dark Horse published a series in 1998, IDW ran mini-series from 2012, and Boom! Studios took the license in 2021. For the current official story, Wizards of the Coast publishes Magic Story on magic.wizards.com.

Magic comics by publisher and year

Magic comics have changed publisher several times since the game launched in 1993. The main runs, in order:

The runs are separate series, so a reader can pick up any of them without the others.

The first Magic comics from Armada

The first Magic comics came from Armada, an imprint of Acclaim Entertainment. Wizards of the Coast gave Acclaim an exclusive comics license in 1994, a year after the card game came out. The Armada books ended suddenly in 1996, when Acclaim ran into financial trouble, so some of their storylines were never finished.

Dark Horse picked up the license next and published a four-issue limited series in 1998. These older comics are long out of print and now turn up as back issues.

IDW and Boom! Studios Magic comics

The modern Magic comics began with IDW. In September 2011, Hasbro and IDW agreed on a four-issue mini-series, which started in February 2012. IDW followed in 2018 with a four-issue mini-series about the planeswalker Chandra Nalaar. A sequel was announced in 2019 but was cancelled before publication.

Boom! Studios acquired the Magic comics license in January 2021 and announced a new series that started in April 2021. Boom! is the most recent of the four publishers.

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Magic Story, the official story on Wizards’ site

Magic Story is where Wizards of the Coast publishes the official Magic storyline today, free to read on its own website.

The Magic Story section on magic.wizards.com has:

• The current story in episodes. For Reality Fracture it runs to ten episodes.
• A story archive you can filter by year, from 2014 to 2026.
• Planeswalkers and Planes, a guide to the main characters and the worlds they visit.
• The Magic Story Podcast, for listening to the story.

Where story fans should start reading

A new story fan has an easy starting point: the current set’s episodes on Magic Story, which share their name with the newest set. When a character is new to you, look them up in the Planeswalkers and Planes guide on the same site, then go back through the archive by year if you want the longer history.

The comics come after that, as extra stories about characters you already know. Start with the most recent Boom! Studios run for current characters, or the 2018 Chandra series for one planeswalker’s story.

Magic comics as a gift for a story fan

Magic comics make a good gift for a player who likes the characters as much as the cards. Check the publisher and the issue number on a listing, because each run starts again from issue one. For the game itself, what Magic: The Gathering is covers the basics, and the best way to start playing Magic suggests a first product. More ideas for collectors and players are in gifts for Magic players, and crossover sets with other stories are in what Universes Beyond is.