Netflix & Mark Millar Announce King of Spies

Mark Millar's next comic book with Netflix has been announced in the form of King of Spies, a new original series that will begin as a graphic novel from the Eisner Award nominee. An official press release from the streamer, who owns the Millarworld imprint outright after an acquisition a few years ago, called King of Spies an "original Netflix property" and revealed that the artwork from the graphic novel will be "based on designs created by the team at Netflix." No artist was announced to be attached to the project but the promise of a "superstar artist chosen from the comic-book world."

The new series is officially described as follows: "In King of Spies, Britain's greatest secret agent faces his deadliest enemy yet - his own mortality. Diagnosed with a brain tumour and six months to live, the retired Sir Roland King looks around at the world he's saved so many times and feels he can't leave us in such a mess. There's greed and corruption at every level, untouchable despots he was forbidden to go near and a system he just doesn't believe in any more. He wants to use his remaining time to make a difference with his particular set of skills, and repair the damage he did in his private life at the same time. The most dangerous man in the world has gone rogue and he knows where all the bodies are buried. Now it's time to go after the REAL monsters..."

Two pieces of art were released with the announcement with the first done by Ozgur Yildirim (Loki) and the second by Mark Chiarello (Wolverine).

"We've been quietly working on this for a couple of years in-house and we're all buzzing about it," Millar said in a statement. "The spy world was very good to us with Kingsman and a return to the genre had to be something special. This is that project."

He continued, "I love stories about an old gun-fighter back for one last job and this is the Granddaddy of them all. It's so incredibly violent and emotional, but really fun too. I can't wait for people to see it and wanted to share a couple of the images we've been putting together for the comic-book side of the project. These aren't from the artist we later chose for the book, but they're so good we wanted you to see them.... We're really, really excited about this and will release the name of the stellar comic-book artist we've hired a little down the line."

King of Spies marks the fourth original series created by Millar since his partnership with Netflix was announced with previous titles including The Magic Order, Prodigy, and Sharkey the Bounty Hunter.