“…we buried him on a Tuesday and he returned that Friday…”
The Magic Order is back with a brand new arc, keep reading for a review of The Magic Order 3, issue #1.
Spoilers below.
The first issue of the new arc has everything I wanted: ridiculously lavish lifestyles, horrible violence from unexpected places, horrible violence from expected places, sexy good times, and members of the Magic Order just generally being clueless about how to not act like monsters.
That last one’s important. Cordelia’s hooking up with a married guy because it’s convenient, Regan beats someone almost to death because he knows he can always magically roll it back, little Rosie (she’s like, what, twelve?) is doing her homework in the tittie bar because her uncle said it’s fine as long as she faces away from the stage, one of the members of the Order is obscenely homophobic…I’d mentioned in the last arc that these are supposed to be the “good” guys, but they’re slowly becoming just as decadent and problematic as the Dark Order magicians they fought in the last two arcs.
They’re not evil you understand (Cordelia’s boyfriend’s a consenting adult, Rosie’s had to grow up fast, any out-and-out violence is directed at certifiably bad people, and the homophobic guy….well he’s still an asshole, obviously) but I feel like we’re watching things escalate with every issue. It sure makes for a wild ride.
Several stories are playing out in this issue. First up, Cordelia’s meeting with the Order to fix a problem in Shanghai (looks like the previously mentioned lavish lifestyle of one of the members isn’t Magic-Order-approved.)
Meanwhile, Cordelia’s Dad is on a personal mission, and there’s another mention of the spell Cordelia cast in the first arc and how it “doomed us all.” I was worried that during the second arc they’d explained all that and I missed it, but turns out that’s still a piece of information we don’t have? Interesting.
And while all that’s going on we get a quick look at a scrabble game in Moonstone Castle, where Uncle Edgar’s having some problems. Big, possibly dangerous problems. We already knew why Edgar was in Moonstone Castle (not for his safety so much as everybody else’s) but it looks like the situation’s even more complex than we thought.
I was a little let down by the second arc, mostly because there seemed to be big, unexplained gaps in the story and everybody’s motivations. I’m happy to see that may have been done on purpose, because those gaps are going to (hopefully!) get filled in with this third arc.
Gigi Cavenago takes over the art for this arc, and it’s very different from Olivier Coipel and Stuart Immonen’s work in the previous arcs, with a sketched style and almost angry, slashed linework, very dynamic and expressive, and Valentina Napolitano’s color palette gives it a retro feel in places. It’s tough to pick a favorite image from the issue: the two-page spread of the bar, our first look at the spectral lighthouse, the towering not-angel thing, the beam of light shooting from the planet out into space – there was a lot to choose from.
