Complete List of Marvel “MAX” Comics

Karen Berger took a leap in the early nineties in building on the adventurous spirit that had given DC comics series like Sandman, Kid Eternity, and Shade, The Changing Man. They created Vertigo, which cemented that adult readers were out there looking for literary and artistically challenging comics. Marvel has always been the most popular, yet least diverse of all the publishers, really deeply doubling down on its superhero line. After the sales at Vertigo were so significant, especially in trades and in long-term readers, they decided they had to do something of their own. They created the Marvel MAX line that was intended to bring their properties into a more adult sphere, yet they really just mined their superhero line and old comic properties and gave them an adult spin. This had much less positive results than Vertigo and only a couple really stand out. Thor: Vikings, Alias, The Eternal, and the Punisher series lead up the list of MAX titles, but everyone likes seeing their favorite characters taken to the edge.

We have collected a complete list of all the Marvel MAX line comics. There were a lot of short runs with different titles, so we tried to group them together under one name when relevant and separate them when necessary. For example, the Deadpool and Punisher Christmas Specials did not require their own slot. We also linked to prominent trades for all, which is especially good in the case of the first run of Garth Ennis’ Preacher and Brian Michael Bendis’ Alias(which is a new series coming to Netflix).

Ant-Man (Solicit only, never actually released)