The Magic Order #1 from Mark Millar, Oliver Coipel, and Dave Stewart launches the Millarworld/Netflix collaboration with excellent world-building, GORGEOUS art, and breakneck pacing.
The Magic Order #1
Written by: Mark Millar
Art by: Oliver Coipel
Colors by: Dave Stewart
Letters by: Peter Doherty
We live in a world where we’ve never seen a monster, and The Magic Order is the reason we sleep safely in our beds. Magic meets the mob in THE MAGIC ORDER, as five families of magicians—sworn to protect our world for generations—must battle an enemy who’s picking them off one by one. By day, they live among us as our neighbors, friends, and co-workers, but by night, they are the sorcerers, magicians, and wizards that protect us from the forces of darkness…unless the darkness gets them first. 
Writing
The Magic Order, like most of Mark Millar’s books, explodes with conceptual energy right from the beginning. That storytelling drive, combined with excellent pacing and pitch-perfect dialog makes for one of the best #1 issues Millarword (Millar’s label) has produced. This comic is not only able to create a fully realized world in one issue, it also introduces multiple characters with enough detail to make the reader care about all of them. And all of this is done with little to no exposition. By the time you finish reading it, you really do want to know about the Moonstone family, it’s past and it’s future.
Art
Undoubtedly Oliver Coipel and Dave Stewart are modern masters of sequential art. But their work here together might just be a career high. This is one crisp and excellently visually paced comic. It looks beautiful, elegant even. With a sharp, good-looking and well-produced images and layouts. But don’t let that fool you, as this is one fucked up story being told and the visuals can be as shocking and gory as they are beautiful. It’s really something to be taken in and poured over.
Conclusion
Debut issues don’t get much better than The Magic Order #1. It’s a fantastic concept; excellently written and beautifully illustrated. If this is the kind of stuff Millarworld/Netflix is producing, then we have some great comics and properties to look forward to.
