THE MAGIC ORDER 3 #1: Trouble Brewing at Home and Abroad…

There’s a great deal about this opening issue to recommend it. Let’s get the obvious stuff out the way first. The art from Gigi Cavenago is brilliant. Everything from the most mundane shot to the spectacular splashes of magical flying yachts and eldritch lighthouse locations, hell even Reagans Strip Club is a beautiful and sumptuous detailed feast for the eye. Cavenago shows off his ability to do it all from tight close up facial expression to grandiose and bombastic magical views of the earth from space. The line art is flawless in every respect. Cavenago doesn’t shade, using solid black for all contrast and that’s where colorist Valentino Napolitano steps in and takes that line art to the next level with an incredibly wide gamut of color in a style that sometimes groups shades of a single colors together to give the page an overall tone that perfectly compliments the scene on the page and then conversely color blocking and creating startling contrast on the page with the flat color style. The effect makes for a stylish and unique looking comic that I can’t fault in any regard from an art point of view, with Clem Robbins rounding off a perfectly lettered issue.

Millar does a great job of set up here. Magic Order issue ones tend to follow a pattern. Scene introducing new characters ( his head of the Asian Magic Order Sammy Liu is very what if Tony Stark was a wizard) followed by something gross and shocking…In this case it’s old people and a demonic clock work baby I’ll say no more but it’s very Millar and suitably nightmarish but it does introduce a new character which we will talk more about later. We then shoot back to Cordelia, who is once again entangled with a different sexual partner (again part of Millar’s pattern) and doing the escape artist thing. We catch up with Regan and young Rosie and several other characters that get together to discuss Magic Order business. That brings us back round to that new character I mentioned. A hulking large monster hunter of a man named Sacha Sanchez who doesn’t quite see eye to eye with Regan’s parenting style or his lifestyle. This is pretty much my only criticism of this issue, there is absolutely no reason to make Sanchez a homophobe, none whatsoever and yet there it is clear as day, on the page making the character instantly unlikable and maybe that’s the point or maybe there isn’t one other than Millar’s penchant for irreverence.

We missed Leonard Moonstone completely in the last series but Millar takes the time to give a pretty detailed explanation why which involves a very creepy creature and my favorite scene in the book which introduces us to his former wife and mother of the illustrious Moonstone brood. What her role is in everything remains a mystery but it’s an incredibly drawn scene as Cavenago brings a magical lighthouse with a very specific task to life and Napolitano baths it wonderful green eldritch light. Where this issue does deviate from it’s predecessors is that the threat here remains completely shrouded in mystery. We don’t know anything beyond who may be involved and Millar adds to this by ending the issue back at Moonstone Castle as Uncle Edgar ( a character who’s own history is shrouded and unknown) has a strange moment that ends the issue on a menacing note beautifully brought to life with a splash by the art team.

Overall its an excellent issue #1, which stylishly places the players on the board without giving anything away. If it wasn’t for that particular creative choice I have mentioned I would actually go so far as to call this a perfect opener because the art is incredible and Millar does a great job with his own continuity. A truly a worthy installment into the series.