Sam Kieth's signature creation is coming back after 20 years.


It’s a comic book return fans have been waiting more two decades for, and a team-up that has been even more anticipated: Sam Kieth is coming back to his fan-favorite creation The Maxx for the first time since 1998 in a new miniseries from IDW Publishing and DC Entertainment titled Batman/The Maxx: Arkham Dreams.


The five-issue series sees the Maxx trapped at Arkham Asylum and experimented on by the newest doctor there — only for those experiments to go horribly wrong when Gotham City starts merging with the Maxx’s mental landscape, the Outback. No surprise, then, that the Dark Knight soon becomes involved, although even he doesn’t expect what it will take to put everything back to normal.


“Doing a Batman and Maxx crossover is like a family reunion with my favorite brother and our really cool cousin,” Kieth said in a statement. “You never want it to end…or at least I hope you won’t!”


Since The Maxx wrapped its run in 1998, Kieth has worked on a number of Batman projects for DC, including Batman: Through the Looking Glass, Batman: Secrets and a run on the anthology series Batman Confidential. The Maxx was originally a 35-issue series from Image Comics in the 1990s, with a recent series of collected editions from San Diego-based independent IDW Publishing. The comic book was adapted for animation as part of MTV's Oddities strand in 1995.


Batman/The Maxx: Arkham Dreams continues the relationship between DC and IDW; the two have already co-published Star Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes and Star Trek/Green Lantern, amongst other collaborative projects. The new series is set to begin in September.