The Magician is the name of three fictional characters appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Publication history The first version (Lee Guardineer) first appeared in Tales to Astonish #56 (June 1964), and was created by Stan Lee and Dick Ayers. The last name Guardineer is a reference to the Golden Age comics creator Fred Guardineer who created Zatara, Tor, and Merlin the Magnificent who were all magician crimefighters. Fictional character biography Lee Guardineer Lee Guardineer is a stage magician who used his stage acts to rob rich party guests. His activities attracted the attention of Giant-Man's ants who reported this. The Magician then robbed a yacht party run by the rich socialite Sterling Stuyvesant and kidnapped the Wasp to make Giant-Man jealous. In response, Giant-Man set up a phony yacht party which lured the Magician to a trap. Once that trap was sprung, Giant-Man captured the Magician and saved the Wasp. The Magician was fished out of the water by the police and later taken to prison. While Hank Pym was out of town, the Magician escaped from prison and set up a clothing store with Wasp-inspired clothing. When the Wasp arrived, the Magician attacks in order to capture the Wasp. However, the Wasp soon makes short work of the Magician using quick thinking and the store's many toys to take down the Magician who is promptly arrested by the police. Sometime later, Lee was released from prison and moved to Tampa with a dancer named Chasity to start a new family where he had a son. Son of Lee Guardineer Lee Guardineer had an unnamed son who took up the Magician mantle as part of the "All-New, All-Different Marvel" event. Upon taking his father's mantle, Magician joined the Power Broker's Hench App (a mobile app that enabled people to solicit the service of supervillains). His first job has him hired by publicist Marlena Howard to pretend to have a grudge against Darla Deering for not hiring him for the opening act of the woman's show. The Magician interrupted Deering in the middle of her break-up fight against Ant-Man and confronted the two heroes with genetically-modified rabbits and pigeons. After explaining his origin to Ant-Man, the Magician intentionally lost to Miss Thing. The fight between the Magician and Ant-Man and Darla was staged and filmed because it would make a successful pilot episode for Darla's newest reality