"A good magician always has a trick up her sleeve."
The Magic Order is a six issue mini-series written by Mark Millar and illustrated by Olivier Coipel as the first of Millar's comic deals following the acquisition of his Millarworld brand by Netflix. A second series released in 2021, this time drawn by Stuart Immonen. A third and fourth series, with art by Gigi Cavenago and Dike Ruan respectively, were both released in 2023. Millar himself has described the series as Harry Potter meets The Sopranos. The characters also appeared in the big Millarworld Crisis Crossover Big Game (2023).
Beyond the veils of space and time, there are monsters wildly out of our collective imaginations loose and threatening reality. They are combated by a power group of wizards known as The Magic Order, a collective of various magician families sworn to protect the regular masses. Between being stage magicians and battling Eldritch Abominations, their operations are largely not unlike a magical mafia.
Which stands to reason that a mob war be on the horizon.
It soon happens, as Madame Albany of the Albany family makes her move against the Moonstones, the family currently heading the Order, by assassinating various powerful figures with the help of a mysterious being known only as "The Venetian." Her goal? To obtain a powerful tome under the Moonstones' possession named The Orichalcum, a book of the darkest spells of history and the only thing in existence that could theoretically bring the dead back to life. Now the Moonstones have to fight back against Albany and ensure that the Orichalcum doesn't fall into the hands of someone as wicked as her.
An TV series adaptation is being considered to be helmed by James Wan of Saw and Aquaman fame, with him and showrunner Lindsey Beer acting as executive producers. Production was halted in 2020 because of the COVID-19 Pandemic, but was reported to have been reactivated in 2021.
The series contains examples of:
- The Ace: Gabriel Moonstone is considered the most powerful of his family. Which is why he's practically unstoppable as the Venetian.
- Alas, Poor Villain: Gabriel is willing to let the world burn down if it meant getting his daughter back. But that's exactly the point: all he wants was for his daughter back. And after he allows himself to be killed as a sacrifice to revive her, the Magic Order do not condemn him and sympathize with his actions.
- Back from the Dead: Everyone who had been murdered by Albany is brought back to life by Cordelia in the climax.
- Badass Boast: Uncle Edgar, once he lets loose, has this to say:Edgar: I killed a million people when I last used my powers, and I'd kill a lot more if they hadn't built these walls around me. Uncle Edgar's why Egypt's a desert. Uncle Edgar's why there's half the stars there used to be. I'm not locked up to protect me from the outside world. I'm locked in here to protect the world from me.
- Badass Family: The Moonstones have been running the Order for centuries, and every member is by their own right a powerful wizard.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Uncle Edgar is a tiny, mild-mannered old man who appears to be agoraphobic, spending his time in Moonstone Castle's than outside. It's eventually revealed this is because of how much destruction he's caused the last time he was out.
- Black Sheep: Cordelia has the misfortune of being the only illegitimate child of the Moonstone family. What results is a reckless tendency to get into trouble with her escape acts and going against everything she's been told. Luckily this includes reading the Orichalcum when told not to so in the end, she is able to resurrect everyone Albany and Gabriel killed.
- Bury Your Gays: Subverted. Regan has a boyfriend and is killed by Gabriel in the penultimate issue. However, he's resurrected by Cordelia in the finale.
- Character Shilling: Gabriel gets a lot of this from the members of the magic order and his own family while Cordelia is dismissed though not mistreated by most of her family members. Yet Cordelia is the center of the opening flashbacks where she showcases she's a prodigy, and saves the day in the first series.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Edgar's parents molded him into growing up to be an angsty writer by meticulously abusing him and finally committing suicide in front of him. Unfortunately, Edgar's writings were not as successful as they had hoped, turning him into a monster.
- Decoy Protagonist: Gabriel gets a lot of this as a Retired Badass who is pulled back into the Magic Order's business. However, he turns out to be Evil All Along, and the true protagonist is in fact Cordelia, who the rest of the series focuses on as the new leader of the Magic Order once Leonard stepped down in the wake of Gabriel's death.
- Inn Between the Worlds: The Abington Hotel is a wizards-only restaurant that exists outside of time and space, meaning it touches multiple time periods at once, wizards from various eras from The '40s to The Wild West dine here, and none of them are allowed to start any conflict or interact with one another to prevent paradoxes.
- Magicians Are Wizards: Leonard and Cordelia both use their magical powers to make a living as stage magicians.
- Masquerade: Magical battles are carefully fought to prevent being seen or even noticed by the Muggle populace. Sometimes they are simply shielded or memories are wiped and damages are blamed on something mundane.
- My Greatest Failure: For Gabriel, it's being careless enough for his daughter to be accidentally killed by his wand. For Cordelia, it's driving the Moonstone parents apart by being living proof of her father's infidelity.
- Noodle Incident: Regan's worst memory was getting caught jerking off to Saved by the Bell, but he'd rather not admit to which character.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Gabriel defeating the Horoglobin isn't directly seen, but it involves summoning a thunderstorm and trapping the thing in a flask. This is later revealed to be because he staged the fight and unleashed the creature himself.
- Production Throwback: Edgar's backstory ends up being one to Mark Millar's The Unfunnies. As it turns out, Edgar's immense power came from a spell he cast to swap places with a fictional Invincible Hero he created for a book series, giving him the hero's incredible magical abilities while King Edgar is trapped in the real world left for dead. Much of this is how The Unfunnies ended, with the antagonist of that book swapping places with a cartoon character he created to escape the death sentence.
- Reality Warper: Pretty much damn near everyone thanks to magic.
- Red Herring: For seemingly the benefit for nobody in particular but the reader, Albany directly name drops Gabriel when talking about attacking his home to prevent us from knowing earlier that she's talking to Gabriel himself.
- Refuge in Audacity: Cordelia's life seems to be nothing but performing near-impossible and insane escape acts for random and unwilling audiences. As an unborn baby, she managed to momentarily ward off potential scandal for her father by transferring her fetus form and placenta into the womb of the surgeon that was going to abort her.
- Resolved Noodle Incident: It's only in the fourth volume that Edgar's backstory and exactly what he did to be imprisoned is explained. Edgar was raised from a young age by Abusive Parents to become a successful writer, as they reasoned giving him a horrible childhood would inform a creative mind. Their plan failed when Edgar's subsequent Tolkien-esque High Fantasy book series about an Invincible Hero named after himself was a flop, destroying his career and ruining his life. After being given a spellbook, Edgar swapped bodies with his protagonist, inheriting his immense power which he used to raze the failed world he created and eventually entered the real world to wreak havoc. The Magic Order eventually pacified him, turning him into the meek old man he is today.
- Retired Badass: After an accident with his wand that resulted in the death of his daughter, Gabriel bitterly quit the Magic Order to lead a normal life.
- The Reveal: Gabriel is The Venetian, and Albany's plot to steal the Orichalcum was his idea because he wanted to bring his daughter back to life against his father's wishes.
- Screw Yourself: Just before setting out for the latest assassination, Albany orders Cornwall to turn into something interesting and remarks that she wants "to fuck something legendary." Cornwall responds by turning into Albany herself - albeit stark naked. Albany is very appreciative.
- Sequel Goes Foreign: The action is mainly focused in England in Volume 2 as that is where several major artifacts important to the plot is located.
- Shapeshifting Trickster: Lord Cornwall is the token shapeshifter of Madame Albany's villainous posse of wizards, and loves using his powers for deceit - most prominently by sneaking into Castle Moonstone while disguised as Louise. For good measure, he also has a sick sense of humor, a fact that he demonstrates by showing up to the funeral of one of his victims in the form of said victim - naked, covered in blood, with a knife in his skull.
- Spacetime Eater: The Horoglobin devours time, kills several people in Gabriel's neighborhood just by being there. Shown horrifically with Molly, a little girl that rapidly ages until she became dust.
- Stable Time Loop: While they don't and aren't allowed to interact in the Abington Hotel, Madame Albany theorizes that the past version of her father seeing her as the monster she is in the present is what convinced him that she's untrustworthy to carry on the family name.
- Sudden Name Change: The Horoglobin was previously referred to as the Horologium in Issue #2.
- Transformation Discretion Shot: Lord Cornwall introduces his shapeshifting power in a three-panel process, during which we can see his face briefly contorting as he transforms into a murder victim with a knife through his brain. However, all his other transformations occur off-panel: most prominently, Madame Albany demands sex from Cornwall before they head out for their latest assassination, ordering him to take on an interesting form so she can "fuck something legendary." Next panel reveals that Cornwall has become a stark-naked doppelganger of Albany herself - much to the real Albany's delight.
- Truce Zone: The Abington Hotel, due to being time-sensitive as an Inn Between the Worlds.
- Written by the Winners: In the sense after committing multiple atrocities to rise in power, Albany will run the Magic Order with complete benevolence. Her goal is to show her late father that she is fully capable of running the show out of spite for never trusting her.
- Working with the Ex: Angelo is a prodigy himself but has had his own mental health issues including drug abuse which he went to rehab for.
