This comes from a rather ambitious, five-tome series called Le jour des Magiciens (“Day of the Magicians”), by an Italian duo, Michelangelo La Neve & Marco Nizzoli. I found it much in the style of Alejandro Jodorowsky, full of fanciful ideas and powerful sequences that sometimes hit the mark, and sometimes seemed a bit nonsensical.

The plot involves “Lancaster,” a renegade, modern-day magician, who’s disgusted by the stagnation of his order, who has the idea to father an offspring to become a sort of new magi-messiah. This doesn’t sit well with his old order, who keep trying to kidnap his son and assassinate the father. The mother of the boy is in fact “Ash” (the lead assassin’s) sister, so the bad blood only builds, as you can see:

—> https://imgur.com/gallery/movie-esque-sequence-from-day-of-magicians-by-la-neve-nizzoli-bFiAH7N <—

(I thought it was a neat, movie-like juxtaposition, having the main action run concurrent with a children’s story)

To be clear, the sequence above is fairly atypical, as this is mostly a plot and narrative-driven work, but with some intense moments as above. Here and there it can sag a bit under the weight of exposition, but otherwise moves forward with good storytelling, and of course delightful art.

Btw, if you’ve already read this series and seen the sci-fi movie Zardoz, did you happen to make this connection?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwq5RYrm5kE