Not content to dominate in just movies, television and stand-up comedy specials, Netflix recently spread their media empire even further and expanded into the world of comics when they purchased well-known comic-creator Mark Millar’s comic book company Millarworld last year, and the fruits of that move are finally blooming. Netflix is about to release the first 6 issues of their first comic book series, ‘The Magic Order,’ written by Mark Millar with artist Olivier Coipel, and they’re marketing the release with a new motion trailer which shows off the bold imagery of the comic and introduces the story elements within (a trailer you can check out below).
While talking to EW about the comic back in April, Millar described it as “The Sopranos meets Harry Potter” and went on to talk about the inspiration for the idea, stating that:
“As a kid, I always used to rationalize the fact that there were no monsters (since nobody’s ever seen a monster or caught one on camera), with the idea that there are people who take care of this, and that’s why you never see it. So the idea is there’s a family of wizards who have been around for thousands of years and they take care of bad stuff. They live among us as stage magicians and other eccentric jobs during the day, but at night, they get together and take care of problems.”
It does sound interesting, though there is a similar book series out there with a contemporary tone, also with a more serious take on magic, that also takes place in our world, called ‘The Dresden Files,’ (which I personally love), but this is comics and not novels, and I suppose there is plenty of room for both series to exist at once without there being an issue, as long as Millar does not start borrowing elements from ‘Dresden Files,’ which has been around for years.
Here’s hoping Netflix’s latest endeavor works out for them as I love the comic industry and any new life breathed into it by companies interested in investing money in it can only be a good thing from my point of view.
