Headlining Character From 2027 MTG Set Appears a Year Early

Last updated on September 4, 2026

Teferi's Protection | Illustration by Greg Staples

Teferi fans were happy to see him announced as a primary character in the 2027 Zhalfir set at MagicCon Amsterdam, and they should be exceedingly happy about the newest news: He’s appearing nearly a year early as the featured character of a new comic series from Dark Horse, The Mage of Zhalfir; promotional copies were dispersed to comic book stores this week, though the comic won’t start until November.

Source: King Comics

We have very little information about the comic besides a snippet from Comics Beat, reporting on the Dark Horse SDCC panel: The Mage of Zhalfir “will…follow time mage Teferi Akosa ‘through some of the most foundational stories of the Magic multiverse.’”

What Will the Mage of Zhalfir Be About?

Teferi, Master of Time | Illustration by Yongjae Choi

While we don’t know the specific stories or how they’ll be portrayed, the line about “foundational stories,” plus this being separate from Dark Horse’s Untold Stories series, makes it pretty clear that we’ll be reaching into the past of Magic’s storyline, likely towards Teferi’s first stories, when he was a student at Urza’s Tolarian Academy.

The first storyline tackled will likely be of the young Teferi, a prankster with great magical potential and student at the Tolarian Academy…until one day, the Phyrexians attacked, and Teferi, Jhoira, and many other students were killed. When Urza sent Karn back in time to stop the attack, he caused a temporal disaster that still destroyed the academy, but Teferi got trapped in a time bubble, and was eventually rescued. Exposure to these temporal magics are why he (and Jhoira) are alive in the modern day.

Another critical element of Teferi’s past, and one that I imagine will be shown given its importance to the upcoming set, is the Mirage War, the subject of Mirage Block. Teferi, a Royal Mage of great importance to Zhalfir, awakens his spark and creates a government system meant help the country while he travels the Multiverse; he returns to find it in civil war. After growing disillusioned with his people, Teferi went off to experiment with time magic and accidentally phased Zhalfir out, for the first time, for 200 years.

The next big elements are the Phyrexian Invasion and the events of Time Spiral block. During the Phyrexian Invasion, Teferi phases out Zhalfir and Shiv, choosing to protect them from Phyrexia rather than fight alongside Urza. Centuries later, he and Jhoira would come back to Dominaria to phase the lands back in, in Time Spiral, but they found the plane nearly devoid of mana as centuries of magical apocalypse had damaged the plane, opening rifts around areas where great spells were worked.

Among these were the Shivan Rift and Zhalfirin Rift, caused by Teferi phasing them out. Teferi gave up his planeswalker spark to seal the Shivan Rift and unphase the land, but the Zhalfirin rift was closed by another planeswalker, Jeska, whose forceful approach didn’t return Zhalfir to Dominaria. Of course, the events of March of the Machine see Zhalfir returned to the Multiverse, overlapping Mirrodin/New Phyrexia. Following the events of Time Spiral, Teferi would meet his wife, Subira, and settle down with his daughter, Niambi.

While Teferi features in story events after this, returning in 2018’s Dominaria, all of that is modern story—his role in the Gatewatch, the War of the Spark, etc. It’s unlikely that these stories would be retold so soon after their original telling; it’s also much easier to read the modern fiction because much of it is posted online, while the events relayed above were largely written in long-out-of-print books.

Will This Comic Connect To 2027’s Zhalfir Set?

Zhalfir Art | Illustration by Travis Anderson

With the limited information available, I find it unlikely that The Mage of Zhalfir will connect to the story of Zhalfir, unless the writers use a framing device to move back and forth. That said, these comics connect to Zhalfir in that they tell the history of the country-made-plane. The history of Zhalfir is deeply tied to Teferi and so much of it is in the old lore that newer players probably don’t know much about it. I doubt this comic will tell us much about Zhalfir’s story (though I would be happy to be wrong!); rather, it’s as a refresher course before returning to a place rich with history in Magic.