As the daughter of Johnny Cage and Sonya Blade, Cassie Cage thinks she's seen it all. But when she finds herself in an illegal MMA deathmatch, Cassie must decide if she's ready for her first taste of Mortal Kombat!

THE PREQUEL TO THE VIDEO GAME PHENOMENON IS HERE! For years, a tenuous peace has existed between the realms, time enough for old champions to fall and a new generation to rise. But peace can never last for long . . . The Thunder God Raiden has seen visions of a great evil entering our world, one so powerful it could change the very face of the universe. The one hope to stop the sinister force lies in six ancient relics, mystical blades imbued with the Blood Magick of the One Being—the Kamidogu daggers. But Raiden and his allies are not the only ones searching for the all-powerful weapons. Another has spent years acquiring each blade through cunning and guile. For not only can the Kamidogu daggers contain a god, they also have the power to create one . . . Kombatants old and new will fight for the future of our realm and the realms beyond in this red-hot debut by writer Shawn Kittelsen. Together with artists Dexter Soy (DC UNIVERSE VS MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE) and Veronica Gandini (JUSTICE LEAGUE BEYOND 2.0), they’ll start this action-packed newest chapter in the Mortal Kombat saga off with a bloodbath!

The quest for the Kamidogu daggers continues…fight! Great changes are coming to Outworld and Earthrealm alike. Whether they seek to protect the worlds of gods and men or to rule them, Kombatants new and old are heading toward bloody conflict. Hoping to thwart the coming evil, Raiden has conscripted Hanzo Hasashi-Scorpion-and his charge, Takeda Takahashi, to gather the mystical Kamidogu daggers. Their journey leads them to an old foe, who holds one of the powerful cursed weapons-Kuai Liang, the ninja known as Sub-Zero! With Sub-Zero corrupted by the Blood Magik of the dagger and Scorpion's deadly thirst for vengeance, the two will lock in a Mortal Kombat for the ages! Elsewhere, Kotal Kahn faces a challenge to his rule from the scorned tribe of the Shokan. King Gorbak is leading an army of Shokan and Oni warriors powerful enough to decimate the Emperor of Outworld. Though Kahn refuses to unleash his Kamidogu's Blood Magik again, he has an unlikely group of allies in the Earthrealmers Johnny Cage and Sonya Blade. The pair only wishes to rescue their daughter from the clutches of Reiko, but first they'll have to help Kahn protect his throne-which means an alliance with Kano and the Black Dragon! Writer SHAWN KITTELSEN continues his epic debut with the help of artists DEXTER SOY (DC UNIVERSE VS MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE), IGOR VITORINO (Green Hornet) and DANIEL SAMPERE (BATGIRL), as they paint the blood-soaked story that leads into the video game phenomenon in MORTAL KOMBAT X: BLOOD GODS! Collects issues #5-8.

As the most powerful champions from Earthrealm and Outworld fall to the ultimate power contained within the Amulet of Shinnok, in one final effort, Takeda must use his newly-acquired fighting style to square off against Havik!

Anglo-American culture is marked by a gladiatorial impulse: a deep cultural fascination in watching men fight each other. The gladiator is an archetypal character embodying this impulse and his brand of violent and eroticised masculinity has become a cultural shorthand that signals a transhistorical version of heroic masculinity. Frequently the gladiator or celebrity fighter - from the amphitheatres of Rome to the octagon of the Ultimate Fighting Championships - is used as a way of insisting that a desire to fight, and to watch men fighting, is simply a part of our human nature. This book traces a cultural interest in stories about gladiators through twentieth and twenty-first-century film, television and videogames.