Marvel Comics revealed the full details of its upcoming horror-centric line of comics on Monday after teasing it last week. Marvel Midnight Universe will be a separate line of books from Marvel’s main continuity and will feature terrifying reimaginings of some of its most popular heroes, starting with the X-Men, Spider-Man, and the Fantastic Four.
“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,” editor-in-chief C.B. Cebulski said in a press release.
Midnight X-Men will find writer Jonathan Hickman returning to write the classic team. Hickman engineered the Krakoan Age reboot of the X-Men in 2019 with the House of X and Powers of X miniseries, which found the X-Men free from death as they discovered a way to continually revive themselves. The superheroes then created their own nation and welcomed all mutants across the globe to become a part of it. (Because we’re talking comics, the X-Men were rebooted a few years later and were back to the ol’ “on the run while being hated and feared” status quo.)
Hickman’s Midnight X-Men will find the mutants at odds with vampires on the streets of New York City. “The conceit of Midnight X-Men aligns perfectly with the kind of stories I like to tell. It has a rich, open-ended mythology that equally mixes old and new ideas into something that feels both familiar and original,” Hickman said. He’s joined by artist Matteo Della Fonte and Dike Ruan has drawn the first issue’s main cover.
Midnight Fantastic Four finds “an obsessive scientist” (likely Reed Richards) peeking somewhere he maybe shouldn’t, leading to him and three others being “warped in strange and horrifying ways.” Benjamin Percy will pen the book with Kev Walker drawing it.
“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,” Percy said. He intends to reimagine the story of Marvel’s First Family “as one of cosmic, Lovecraftian dread.”
Last up is Midnight Spider-Man, which sounds like it’s pulling from the Man-Spider stories in the comics and the ’90s animated show. It’ll follow Peter Parker after he’s transformed into a “hideous spider hybrid” by Oscorp. He’ll attempt to stop the corporation from making any more monstrosities. Phillip Kennedy Johnson will write it and artist Scie Tronc will make his Marvel debut on Midnight Spider-Man.
“You don’t take on a job like reinventing Spider-Man to go halfway,” Johnson said. “I’m leaving it all in the ring with Midnight Spider-Man and I know Jonathan and Ben are doing the same.”
Midnight X-Men #1 will go on sale Aug. 5, while Midnight Fantastic Four and Midnight Spider-Man will follow in September and October, respectively. With the exception of the debut issues, the main covers for Midnight books will be “Cloaked Covers” that partially obscure the full artwork, “only revealing themselves to readers daring enough to pick them up on stands.” Ominous.