Posted in: Comics | Tagged: HRL, Mark Millar, millarworld, netflix, olivier coipel, rob liefeld, the magic order

The Magic Order Is Mark Millar's First Netflix Comic, With Olivier Coipel

Published Tue, 07 Nov 2017 09:30:10 -0600

You have to appreciate efficiency. When Netflix acquired Millarworld, it cut out the middleman in the "Mark Millar comes up with comic idea, Mark Millar sells comic idea to studio, Mark Millar comic becomes movie" process (somewhere in there, maybe Millar actually makes the comic, too). So when Millar revealed last week that he would soon reveal his first new comic under the deal, we were pretty excited.

Millar said that he asked the best comic book artist in the industry to draw this landmark new book. Unfortunately, Rob Liefeld is apparently not involved, but he did a pretty good job in selecting his second choice: Olivier Coipel. Announced today on Entertainment Weekly (but not in the headline), Coipel will be joining Millar for a six-issue comic called The Magic Order, described as:

"Five families of magicians have spent generations protecting humankind while living among them as normal-seeming neighbors and co-workers. But when a new enemy emerges and starts picking off the wizards one by one, it forces them to take new measures."

Millar said that the comic aims to make fantasy something that a mainstream audience can connect with:

"So my idea with The Magic Order was to take something that's essentially about a secret order of good wizards who got rid of all the bad things hundreds of years ago, but live quietly among us now with blue-collar jobs and ordinary domestic lives. They have this secret life, but to the outside world it's all very normal and it makes the idea look more like The Sopranos than Lord of the Rings."

And said that he hopes Coipel steps up his game for this comic:

"Olivier is probably the best artist working in comics right now. I've been trying to get him for almost 10 years, but he just kept re-upping his deals elsewhere and I couldn't get my hands on him. But Netflix is very persuasive. This is where everyone wants to be right now, and he's as excited as I am about drawing this. He's just started, but as you can see from the preview he's already doing the best work of his career. It's genuinely a privilege to have him drawing the first volume of this series. I hope he can do more because the bar is just so damn high now."

The Magic Order is set to hit stores in the Spring. It's unclear whether Netflix's adaptation will be out before then.