Gandalf

Gandalf is the wandering wizard from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, who recruits the hobbit Bilbo Baggins to join a company of dwarves on a quest to reclaim their homeland from the dragon Smaug. Eclipse adapted his story into comics form beginning in 1989.

Few characters arrive in comics already carrying the weight of legend, and when Eclipse brought Gandalf to the page in 1989, readers got to experience Tolkien's immortal wandering wizard in vivid sequential art for the first time in the Copper Age. Across adaptations of The Hobbit — including the expanded graphic novel edition — he strides through panels alongside Bilbo Baggins, Balin, and the rest of that beloved company, every bit as commanding in ink as he is in prose. It's a modest catalog footprint, just eight appearances, but each one is a piece of comics history: a bridge between one of literature's most treasured fantasies and the art form that brought it to a new generation of fans. For collectors with a love of both Middle-earth and the medium, this is a genuinely special corner of the Eclipse library worth seeking out.