The Hero

SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Secret Empire #10, on sale now. We all knew he was coming back. Even without Monday’s spoilers (courtesy of Marvel Comics and the New York Times), it was a given that the original Steve Rogers would return at the conclusion of Nick Spencer’s Secret Empire. It’s not just a comic book thing about restoring the status quo; part of Rogers’ M.O. is making his way back from places nobody else could. RELATED: Secret Empire Reveals the Secret of Bearded Steve Rogers After being frozen in ice at the end of World War II, he returned in the 1960s to lead the Avengers. He made his way back from a remote tropical island after the Red Skull used a Cosmic Cube to swap bodies with him, stranding him in the middle of nowhere. He even survived being shot by his girlfriend, Sharon Carter, then being sent back in time to careen from one random moment in his past to another. Click Here to Read the Complete Article

Matt Wagner has written and drawn comic book characters of all shapes and sizes at many publishers, but he’s still most closely associated with two of his own creations: Mage and Grendel. While the Grendel saga has certainly generated the higher number of pages, it’s Mage that is clearly the more personal of the two. And now, Wagner has begun the third and final 15-issue series in his comic book trilogy with Mage: The Hero Denied #1, as his protagonist faces the most dangerous and deadly challenge of his life. Namely, a family. RELATED: Matt Wagner Ends Mage Saga with Final Chapter The Hero Denied The first two entries in the trilogy (Mage: The Hero Discovered and Mage: The Hero Defined) introduced us to Kevin Matchstick, the reincarnation of Arthur Pendragon himself. Wielding a magical baseball bat with the powers of Excalibur, Kevin fights off dark spirits and mythic creatures with the aid of a mystical advisor with the title of the World-Mage (Mirth in the first volume, Wally Ut

Now that the so-called “Heroic Age” is well under way, there can be no doubt that the time has come for the X-Men to do their traditional “fashionably late” routine. In this one-shot (which also functions as an epilogue to “Second Coming”), various members of the team are allowed out of the X-ghetto and given a chance to rub shoulders with some of the Marvel Universe’s more well-known characters. And Molly Hayes, of the Runaways. Although the X-Office has recently been big on doing anthology tie-ins to crossovers, this one takes a different tack. The three artists are divided up by plot thread, but the presence of a single writer allows the stories to be intertwined in a way that gives the book a more engaging structure than the simple anthology format, with each thread interleaved in such a way that they complement, rather than simply succeed, one another. Whether because the format agrees with him, or the artists simply click better, Fraction’s writing seems far stronger than usua

Marvel puts its best foot forward with a collection of sneak peeks into recently- and soon-to-be launched titles. This issue could very well have been titled “Marvel New Comics Sampler” since that is essentially what this issue is. The stories here all weigh in evenly at eight pages apiece, and for the most part are tackled by the creative teams assigned to the book being previewed. The exception to that is the Black Widow story, which is the only story to tie in to a book already in progress. The others all have ties to new books that haven’t started yet (or, in the case of “Atlas,” started this week). Kelly Sue DeConnick writes the Black Widow here, and she does a good job of writing a story that feels like a “typical” (if such a thing exists) Black Widow story. Jeff Parker checks in with two stories — Atlas and Thunderbolts — and continues to make a case for larger, higher profile assignments as he takes what could be throwaway stories and fills them with character. Gage’s Repti

The young prince Arslan is ready to prove himself on the battlefield, but on his first battle, his father is betrayed and his kingdom is conquered. With his army in shambles, Arslan is forced to go on the run in search of allies to bring him back home. Who doesn’t love a good coming-of-age story through warfare and struggle with a side helping of an epic quest. It is really the easiest plot to write, but doing it well like in Arslan takes some finesse. If you want more finely cultivated anime recommendations like The Heroic Legend of Arslan, we have you covered. For Fans of Royals Forced Out of Their Kingdom Guin Saga   The kingdom of Parros has been invaded. The king and queen have been slain, but their twin children have been spirited away by a strange device in the palace. Lost in the Roodwood, they are rescued from invading soldiers by a strange amnesiac leopard-headed man named Guin. Both Arslan and Guin Saga follow the trials and tribulations of royals tha