The latest issue of Mark Millar's Big Game limited series answers another looming question about how his sprawling, shared continuity fits together, explaining why firmly villainous Wesley Gibson, protagonist of that series.
Big Game #3 – written by Mark Millar, with art by Pepe Larraz – features an appearance by the Magic Order, which serves to explain how the Order and the Fraternity could coexist.
While the explanation might satisfy for now, it may in fact be set up for a reversal, which could find Cordelia Moonstone, current leader of the Order, Kick-Ass and the Millarverse's remaining heroes to defeat Wesley and the Fraternity.
What Happened to Kick-Ass' Dave Lizewski, Officially Confirmed
In the Millarverse crossover miniseries Big Game, Dave's life after ending his Kick-Ass career has been revealed, with a return seemingly imminent.
The Magic Order Is Not Meant To Deal With "Earthly Matters"
Magic Order consists of four volumes, the most recent appearing in 2023, shortly before the Millarverse-spanning Big Game crossover series began. The Order are a group of families mandated to protect the world from mystical threats. With Millar's Big Game revealing that all of his series take place in a shared continuity, readers have questioned how the Magic Order could exist alongside the Fraternity of Super Criminals, the secret cabal that rules Earth in the Millarverse, as first established in 2008's Wanted. While not answering the question in great detail, Big Game #3 offers at least the beginning of an explanation, which itself promises more to come.
The Fraternity Of Super Criminals Poses More Than A Natural Threat
"If we get involved in earthly matters, the problem only comes back ten times bigger," Order member Charlie explains to Cordelia Moonstone, the order's head, in Big Game #3. "It's just hard to stand back and watch this Wesley Gibson creep take down all these heroes like his dad did in the '80s," Cordelia says, making it clear that the Order knows of the Fraternity's existence, and its defining role in the backstory of the Millarverse. As Wanted established, the Fraternity wiped out the world's superheroes and erased their true from the collective memory, with only a faint impression remaining in the form of comic book stories.
What is unclear is if the Magic Order is aware of the full extent of the Fraternity's meddling with reality, as Wanted states that magic was among the tools implemented by Wesley's father and the Fraternity to rewrite the history of superheroes out of existence. Whether the Order would consider this a "supernatural threat" is still unclear. "They'll get what's coming to them eventually," Charlie consoles Cordelia, advising her not to act, "the bad guys always do." Whether this maxim, true in most superhero stories, will hold true for the Millarverse in the long term – or in the remaining issues of Big Game is up for debate.
As readers of The Magic Order have come to know, Cordelia Moonstone may not be able to stand by and watch another generation of superheroes slaughtered, another generation of the ordinary people she and her Order are sworn to protect diminished and abused by the secret rule of the Fraternity of Super Criminals. Big Game has already been jam-packed so far, and the remaining issues seem set to bring the series to a chaotic and unexpected conclusion; it would not be a surprise to see The Magic Order, or at least its leader, the action – and if so, readers must then ask: what is ten times bigger than Wanted's Fraternity?
