Marvel Comics Reveals First Look At Midnight Debut Issues And Issue #3 Covers
by Tony Thornley
Marvel Comics’ Midnight line is shaping up to be one of the biggest launches in years, and ahead of the triplet series’ October debuts, we’re getting a look at interiors for the first issues, as well as teases of the third…
If you’ve been living under a rock (sorry, not sorry), Midnight Marvel is the October-launching line of new horror-centered ongoing series from the House of Ideas. Each of the three series takes either an element of an iconic series’ concept or a horrific moment in its history and turns it into the basis of this horrifying world.
Warning: Because these are horror stories, some of the images below may be disturbing and frightening.
In Midnight Spider-Man from Phillip Kennedy Johnson and Scietronic, Peter Parker’s radioactive spider bite does more than give him the proportional strength and speed of a spider turning him into something much more frightening. In Midnight Fantastic Four from Benjamin Percy and Kev Walker, Reed Richards’ pursuit of knowledge leads four explorers into a horrific cosmic transformation. And in Jonathan Hickman and Matteo Della Fonte’s Midnight X-Men, mutants are no longer the most hated and feared race on the planet, as vampires have conquered the world.
“I need to be careful not to spoil what the iconic spider is, and what it’s doing to Peter … It’s a mystery we’ll slowly reveal over the course of the series,” Johnson teased in an interview with IGN. “I want people to have their own theories, and for those theories to escalate and evolve as we slowly reveal what’s happening to Peter. But I can say the body horror escalation from issue to issue is extreme. The hope is that by the time our readers read issue #3, they’ll be hard-pressed to imagine where it can even go from there. We’ve had to get very creative with the fringe science of the story to ensure there are still horrific new vistas to explore 25, 50, and 100+ issues from now. Every time an issue hits shelves, I want our readers sweating and shivering all the way until the next one hits.”
“This is an origin story,” Percy told ComicBook.com in a recent interview. “Reed doesn’t know Sue and Johnny and Ben, and even as their stories intertwine, a very different breed of ‘family’ is born — far more toxic and complicated. These characters are all facing horrors within that will help them pursue the horrors without. Their backstories are all different, and so are their futures, so whatever you think you know about FF is about to be revised through the lens of cosmic horror.”
Check out interior pages from each series above, as well as the “A” cover to the third issue of each series.
Marvel Comics’ Midnight line debuts October 7th, and will be the publisher’s only release that week. In the meantime, watch for more news about Midnight Marvel over the next five or so weeks.
