“My family has beaten your family for longer than anyone can remember.
Time to carry on the tradition…”
It’s the final issue of the arc and I’ve got some questions. Keep reading for a review of The Magic Order volume 2, issue #6.
BIG spoilers below.
Last issue it seemed like Victor gave us the explanation for his vendetta against the Magic Order, that they stole his birthright and made the dark order powerless. I still don’t understand that. Clearly members of the dark order still had magical abilities (the old woman who could charm people into murdering each other, the man who took out a plane full of people because he liked killing himself in new and interesting ways so he could come back and nab the insurance money) so was the Magic Order just not paying attention to the mayhem they were still creating?
And Victor was bitter about being a bottle washer and broke. How was that the Magic Order’s fault? Again, it seems like they still had powers, why did he blame the Magic Order for his lack of money? By the last issue I feel that still wasn’t explained.
And I still don’t know exactly why Cordelia casting the resurrection spell was the reason why the dark order was able to make their move. Victor said the spell she cast was cursed. But (spoilers) in the end he was defeated and everybody was okay. So was he just…wrong about the curse? At the end of the issue they blithely say “oh there’s always some insurrections when a new leader over the Order,” so was the dark order uprising never Cordelia’s fault to begin with? Because they sure implied it was.
I enjoyed the twist regarding Francis’ fate, Millar does like to take advantage of our assumptions, and we hadn’t seen enough last issue to know that he was actually dead.
However, I think he really was high as a kite most of the time, so much that he accidentally killed a high-ranked member of the Magic Order. Killing the demon that was egging him on was enough to get him to go straight, but at the end of the issue he was checking himself back into a facility, so he still has a problem. I’m glad that he was able to get it together long enough to save the day, but it felt a little, I don’t know, simplistic? A heroin addiction that can be conveniently shaken off right when you need to?
It goes along with Rosie showing up to save the day too, it was awesome and fun, but I was hoping that both she and Francis were part of Cordelia’s master plan. Turns out, everybody was just really lucky. Which is fine, luck happens, I’d just been hoping for something more complicated.
Ditto with the final resolution. After several pages of playing hot potato with the time-traveling demon, Cordelia sacrifices herself to pull the demon into the void. Then she escapes as part of her final performance, which has been set up since the beginning, that’s a nice twist. But in the end the explanation for how she did it was basically “I’m an escapologist and I’m not telling you my secret.”
Which is fine, I don’t have to have everything spelled out. But Millar’s a master story-teller and it felt like so many of the resolutions in this series were literal handwaving. Yes, I know, magic, that’s the explanation. I just wanted a little more?
Like the business with Francis selling his Dad’s home. I’m still not clear on whether his Dad sold it out of the goodness of his heart (which seems unrealistic and weird) or Francis just magicked his Dad into doing it, in which case I would’ve liked to have seen someone shake their finger at him and acknowledge how wrong that was. Supposedly Francis’ debts were so bad they had to sell the estate, but then a member of the Magic Order bought it and turned it into a rehab facility and made sure his Dad had an apartment in it. That’s lovely, but if they had the money to buy the house couldn’t they have just paid off the debts and let Francis’ Dad keep the house? “We like to look after our own, Lord King.” Weren’t you guys about to let him move into a nursing home?
That basically sums up my issue with this arc. I kept flipping back pages, thinking I’d accidentally skipped something. I understand the gist of what’s going on but I’m assuming a lot of things. I don’t need to have every single point explained to me in a comic, but when I finish a series feeling this puzzled I wonder if there was a page or two missing out of my copy.
It’s not like I disliked the series. I love the explanation for the old guy in the bed that we saw in the first issue, that was sweet. I liked the one guy they tracked down at the end in a train station, that was fun. And Stuart Immonen’s art is beautiful from beginning to end, whether it’s pretty people or magical fights or carnage and gore, it’s all amazing.
So I don’t want to come across like I’m nitpicking it to death, I really did enjoy it. It just wasn’t satisfying the way the first arc was. And any time I’m this puzzled about something, there’s usually one piece of information I’m missing, something that would make me say “Ohhhhh, now I understand.” If I’m being honest? It feels so different from the first Magic Order series, it’s like Millar didn’t write it. it’s not bad! But the difference in pacing, dialogue, plotting…if I found out he had a stand-in for this one, that’d make everything make sense.
