Mage #11

Three figures charge urgently through a heavy snowstorm on Matt Wagner's cover for this eleventh chapter of Mage: The Hero Defined — a bearded man in green pants grips a blazing white staff at center, flanked by a blond figure in sunglasses and a bespectacled young man in a red scarf, all of them bracing against the swirling flurry. The wintry setting gives "Dwindle, Peak and Pine" an immediate sense of cold-weather tension, and Wagner's loose, energetic linework keeps the scene feeling urgent without tipping into chaos. A fine installment in one of 1999's most creatively personal superhero series.