Every month, Dark Horse Comics gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at the making of a comic or book in the Horsepower column which appears in each of our printed comics issues for the month. These articles can include the inspiration behind a specific title, what it’s like to work in the comics industry, or some other special feature on the highlighted title of the month. In this month’s Horsepower, Michael W. Conrad gives readers a look into the new series Magic: The Gathering: Untold Stories–Jace:
I started playing Magic in middle school when the cards of the era were nowhere near as synergistic as they are today. Even then the metas for the sixty-card format were certainly becoming evident elsewhere, but my young playgroup worked with what we had. If you pulled a cool card, you would just slot it into your deck, mana curve be damned. Unknown to us, we were pioneers of a new type of storytelling, one that involved imagining the nature of the play pieces that populated our boards and the meaning of the cryptic flavor text found on select cards.
Jace was introduced to the game in 2007, making his time as a character in Magic the Gathering older than many of the most dynamic players in the world today. Jace has been the boogeyman of many tables, threatening to mill away the potential of opponents’ libraries and enabling the card’s controller to sift through the potential of their own build to put together a win condition.
Jace can be frustrating to fans. Those interested in the lore behind the character have developed equally conflicting opinions about the storied Planeswalker. While he seems to be a well-meaning guy, his heroism is defined by catastrophic errors. An argument can be made that Jace’s efforts have caused more issues for the Planes he has sworn to defend than the many threats he has met head on. Armed with this information, Jace is an easy target for disdain, but I propose there’s something deeper going on here.
Like many of us, Jace wishes to protect the innocent and do what’s right. As in our own lives, Jace often finds that there’s a price to pay for such efforts. Jace is a mirror of our own altruism colliding with the brutal and dispassionate results of our inability to foresee the results of our interventions. Jace is indeed flawed, but he endeavors to correct his miscalculations, leading him to keep going at all costs until the pieces fall into place. As someone whose job it is to know what he seeks, I still find his goals mysterious, but I suspect they elude even Jace himself. I love that.
If you were to ask me in middle school what my utopian vision for the future would be, my answer wouldn’t be the same as if you asked me today. Sure, there would be an intersectional quality, but as time has passed, my values and the needs of the world around me have evolved. I grew up ignorant of many of the institutional inequalities that exist globally and the massive overhauls required to further our movement toward a brighter tomorrow. In accepting the evolving nature of my own dream for the world, I can understand the many quandaries Jace faces in his own pursuits.
Maybe that’s the meditation presented in this Untold Story, and it just might be why I’ve delighted in wrestling with the Gordian Knot presented by the Wielder of Mysteries himself. My only hope is that I have served the Magic community well, and that you enjoy your time with Jace and Tezzeret as they traverse the Planes.
Magic: The Gathering: Untold Stories–Jace #1, written by Michael W. Conrad, illustrated by Caitlin Yarsky, colored by Alex Guimarães, and lettered by Clayton Cowles, will be available in comic shops on April 1! It is now available to preorder from your local comic shop.