Written by Mark Millar
Art by Olivier Coipel, Stuart Immonen
Published by Millarworld /
Dark Horse Comics
In my recent review of Mark Millar’s The Night Club, I wrote the following of the author— “Like Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, and a few others before him, writer Mark Millar’s very name has become a sign of quality.
Unlike any of those others, he’s managed to leverage that to the point where he became his own brand, Millarworld, and then that brand was purchased outright by Netflix.
After decades of seeing most comic book writers largely remain unknown to the public at large, it’s been kind of fun to watch.”
The reason I reiterate that is that today’s offering is another Millarworld project.
If The Night Club was a fairly traditional action type comic book series, Magic-The Order is a Vertigo-like two-part epic, totaling nearly 400 well-drawn pages of modern-day wizardry and monsters. Actually, it seems to be called The Magic Order. The logo is confusing.
The base story of The Magic Order is all about family, including everyone from the crazy uncle to the rebellious youngsters, the black sheep to the in-laws. As in every family, there are things kept within the family, secrets good and bad, and never to be shared with outsiders. The biggest secret of the book’s Moonstone family is that they are an age-old family of sorcerous beings dedicated to protecting humanity from all sorts of dark, malevolent forces.
Set in the modern day, Book I deals with someone mysteriously and violently killing off the wizard family members, prompting an unexpected reunion of sorts to try to identify and stop the killer. It doesn’t take all that long before the fetish-masked Madame Albany, ostracized from the inner family circle, is identified as being behind it all. Her relations vow to stop her.
From there, following Millar’s expected pattern, we get all sorts of unexpected twists and turns, some genuinely shocking major reveals, and a satisfying ending to this first section of the book.
The art on Book I is credited to Olivier Coipel, a new to me French comics artist with prior US credits I seem to have missed. Colors are by Pete Doherty. Those two make a very good team, each underscoring the atmosphere of the story as needed. Coipel’s work feels both refreshingly original and yet comfortably familiar. While I detect no specific influence, it’s just good, solid storytelling with easy-to-follow artwork.
The characterizations are all good, with strong female characters on both sides. The dialogue throughout is almost universally NSFW, with much of the gory artwork and some explicit sex scenes being definitely the same.
The same can be said for Book II (or Series II, originally) which begins on page 171 and fills out most of the remainder of this volume. It introduces us to European gangster-like wizards as well as vaguely Lovecraftian monsters and a guy with a cool helmet.
Other than Millar, however, all the credits are different here, giving the whole thing at least a slightly different feel.
Another factor differentiating the two sections is that this the art this time is from veteran comic book illustrator Stuart Immonen, whose work I’ve enjoyed for many years. It goes without saying it’s quite pleasingly done, although I think I prefer Coipel’s. Sunny Gho and Dave Curiel are the all-important colorists for this second part.
The fact that the story, if anything more bombastic than the first part, didn’t quite grab me as much as the other one is yet another factor here. The back of the book is rounded out with the usual behind-the-scenes and variant art.
Overall, I quite liked The Magic Order, but I much preferred the first part to the second. Although I see that there are already several more volumes, but I’m not certain I liked it enough to continue on with the series but…
Booksteve recommends.
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