Marvel Comics is plunging its most beloved characters into the dark with the Midnight Universe, a new publishing line kicking off in August with three titles.
The initiative launches with Midnight X-Men #1 by Jonathan Hickman and Matteo Della Fonte on Aug. 5, followed by Midnight Fantastic Four #1 by Benjamin Percy and Kev Walker in September and Midnight Spider-Man #1 by Phillip Kennedy Johnson and French artist Scie Tronc, making his Marvel Comics debut, in October.
“From the original New Universe to two Ultimate Universes, Marvel has a long history of creating and inspiring bold worlds filled with unforgettable characters and fresh ideas that feel new yet recognizable at the same time,” Editor in Chief C.B. Cebulski said. “With the new Midnight line, we’ve given some of our most outstanding creators the opportunity to delve into the darkest corners of their imaginations and birth some of the creepiest, most terrifying takes on the Marvel Universe you’ve ever seen.”
In the Midnight Universe, the X-Men are vampires, the Fantastic Four venture into the unknown and get transformed in horrible ways and Spider-Man is a monstrous spider hybrid.
The titles will feature what Marvel is calling “Cloaked Covers”: main covers partially obscured, with the full artwork revealed only when a reader turns the page. The main cover for Midnight X-Men #1 by Dike Ruan was revealed:
In “Midnight X-Men,” vampires and mutant empyres stalk the shadows of New York City, with all-out war brewing between factions and the unturned caught in the crossfire. Hickman, who most recently oversaw the Ultimate Universe and the birth of the Krakoa storyline in the X-titles, returns to the X-Men for what he describes as a project built on “a rich, open-ended mythology that equally mixes old and new ideas into something that feels both familiar and original.”
It’s not the first time Marvel has paired the X-Men with vampire lore, of course. Their history with the sexiest of undead goes back to when Chris Claremont and Bill Sienkiewicz sent the team into that territory back in 1982, when Dracula turned Storm into a vampire in Uncanny X-Men #159 and Uncanny X-Men Annual #6, with Storm stalking her teammates before being cured.
Midnight Fantastic Four reimagines the team’s origin as a Lovecraftian nightmare, with an obsessive scientist and three others warped by the secrets of the universe. Percy, who has written Ghost Rider and Punisher for Marvel, said the project let him “lean into my worst instincts.” Kev Walker is on art duties.
“If you’ve read my work, you know that I see the world through a dark, disturbed lens. To me, it’s always midnight,” Percy said. “When Hickman called me, it was from a landline in the basement of an abandoned house with the wires cut. Blood poured from the receiver into my ear. I said yes.”
Midnight Spider-Man transforms Peter Parker into a hideous spider hybrid who is the product of Oscorp’s pursuit of eternal life and ultimately embraces his grotesque new form to fight back against the corporation’s experiments. The concept kind if reminds me of “The Six Arms Saga,” spanning Amazing Spider-Man #100–102 in 1971 when a serum Peter Parker took to rid himself of his powers backfired catastrophically, causing him to sprout four additional arms in a story that also introduced Morbius, the Living Vampire. What If? later asked what might have happened if Parker had never been cured.
“The work we’re doing right now on the Midnight line feels like history being made,” Johnson shared. “We’re all bringing creator-owned sensibilities to our projects, we’re redefining boundaries, we’re reinventing these timeless characters in a way that’s never been done. Midnight is nothing like the main line, nothing like the Ultimate line. You will see things in these books that shock you.”
More titles and creative teams are expected to be announced in the coming months.