I’ve made it no secret that Mark Millar is my favorite comic book writer. I can remember the first time I read his work in the Ultimate universe for Marvel and knew that this guy was different. His stuff at Marvel was always fantastic, but it was when he was off in his own ‘Millarworld’ where things went from great to fantastic. I love Kick-Ass, The Secret Service, Supercrooks…well, everything he’s gone on to write under his own imprint; which is why I was super excited to hear that Netflix acquired the rights to Millarworld and would be producing original content for him.
The first such content is the comic book The Magic Order. Think Harry Potter if everyone swore and killed a bunch. The comic will be a 6-issue series and you can pre-order it now. In a letter addressed to comic book retailers prior to the final cutoff for orders of the first issue, Millar wrote, “We want to get back to that crazy, exciting time where a first printing really meant something too and create a real collectibility here with NO SECOND PRINTINGS. We love the idea of making this genuinely sought after. So after inventory on the first and only print run is depleted, there will be no additional printings. That said, we’re very, very sure this is going to sell out.”
The Magic Order is a book “for the kids who enjoyed something like Harry Potter or that kind of genre growing up now having something that appeals to their adult sensibilities,” said Millar in an interview with Comic Book Resources. “Tonally, it’s actually closer to The Sopranos in that it’s about a patriarch in an underworld family and his concerns about his children. King Lear is the basic structure, if that doesn’t sound too pompous, but with magic wands. And it’s dirty. It opens with a shagging scene, so you immediately know this isn’t Hogwarts.”
