Will Striking Midnight Strike Gold For Marvel?

It’s getting close to the midnight hour for Marvel with MIDNIGHT, but is the horror line too late to save the struggling comic book publisher?

I will admit to rolling my eyes at DC’s Absolute Universe. Frank Miller had already made Batman huge and gritty. We had heard his origin so many times. It seemed like a cynical and uninspired cash grab, less Bendis on Ultimate Spiderman and more Liefeld on Heroes Reborn. Absolute Batman made me eat my words and gave DC a place in many many pull boxes. So, when I saw Marvel was trying to add some grit and grue to its Disneyfied universe, I welcomed the idea but wondered if this was just Marvel trying to pull in the Absolute audience by imitating an idea that worked.

I purchased a couple copies of the SDCC Ashcan preview of the three Midnight Universe titles because I felt that not only would that make things clearer but they seemed like a good investment. I think they are, regardless of what other conclusions I reach here. If you see them at ten bucks or less, grab ‘em. They’re a neat little art object. Still, there was a lot I was hoping to glean from it that the solicits left out and I don’t necessarily feel I have gotten that info. What I have are vibes and I will do my damnedest to vibe out and review the vibes. The panels are textless, the solicits pretty much what you already see online and there’s a lot to piece together from context. 

 Midnight Spiderman presents a Peter Parker at the edge of monstrosity. We have often read issues dealing with Spiderman getting additional mutations such as the extra arms or the freaky rebirth in The Other. Brand New Day deals with this in what I think are fun ways that move the plot along. The art by ScieTronic in this textless sample is reminiscent of a slightly more whimsical Junji Ito but there’s teeth, figuratively and literally. Can these anxieties propel this comic toward an interesting story though? I don’t know. Spiderman welcomes edge already. Kraven’s Last Hunt, Torment, Reign, the Death of Jean de Wolff, Harry Osborne as the Green Goblin…Spiderman has had plenty of horror in its pages. This could mean a seamless transition or this could mean a need to overcompensate and one-up what came before. It’s coming soon to my pull box, at which point, I’ll let you know.

Benjamin Percy’s Midnight Fantastic Four might be joining it. The art by Kev Walker looks great. It’s stylized but sharp, not quite as Manga-fied as Midnight Spiderman but the influence feels like it’s there. The Fantastic Four going into horror impresses me more. The First Family has existed in a bright though complicated world of often optimistic retrofuturism. Reed Richards, however, has potential to create horrific tragedies, personal and global and the fruits and costs of his mad science can be genuinely intense. Infused with gothic locales and sinister experiments, I like what I’m seeing here and the story calls out to me more than the other two. 

Midnight X Men is the hardest sell for me. I know Jonathan Hickman knows what he’s doing on X titles. The art by Matteo Della Fonte is also impressive. The opening page gives Neal Adams a run for his money. What I question is whether some of the X Men being vampires actually adds anything to the existing metaphors of persecution and leftist infighting. This is also an incredibly weird comic that has had sentient AI on the team and actual damn leprechauns. One of the X Men, Jubilee actually was a vampire for a while already. This looks moody and gorgeous and the X Men look cool as vampires but this is an X story by an X writer about a team already regarded as monsters. I cannot help but feel pangs of redundancy. Issue 1 might prove me wrong but I might wait for a TPB.

Aesthetically, this brings it and aesthetic is a huge part of comics and our enjoyment of them. You will not be buying an ugly comic if you collect Midnight Universe titles and you probably won’t be sending good money after bad, even if large print runs and too many variants bog down speculation. What you will be doing is having some monster kid fun that’s not going to bring anyone home an Eisner.

Garrett Cook is a Bizarro and horror author. He resides in Portland, Oregon with his partner of almost ten years. He has recently begun doing design work for TTRPGs.

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