Review — ‘Midnight X-Men’ #1 Gives Big ‘Vampire: The Masquerade’ TTRPG Vibes

Welcome to the table,

It’s been a while since I’ve picked up a new X-Men book. My tastes tend to fall into the occult, horror, and non-cape territory. “Gifted mutants” with all their sad, pretty problems tend to get on my nerves more than delight me. That being said, I do like an alternative telling of a story that is really well established, and this new Midnight line from Marvel Comics intrigues me.

So let’s get into it…

 

 

Midnight X-Men: Teeth #1  is written by Jonathan Hickman, with art by Matteo Della Fonte, colors by Arthur Hesle, and letters by VS‘s Cory Petit. The book, like the others in the Midnight line from Marvel, is framed as a darker, more horror-focused title, taking recognized and well-known characters from Marvel Comics and shifting and turning them around a bit in a new shared world.

My initial reaction to the whole thing was “Why?” Then the marketing aspect of my brain, along with the bit of me that remembers working in a comic shop, said, “Because Absolute Batman is doing really well and there is nothing original under the sun.”

The part of my brain that is desperately trying to hold onto wonder and awe is, of course, screaming “What if! What if!” and reminding me of all those classic What If..? stories I grew up enjoying. However, the thing that actually got me to read this book was way simpler.

 

 

The art that is sampled for the A cover is Vampire Storm and Priest Nightcrawler, and while it hints at the awesomeness of the full image, the reprint “full art” cover looks absolutely phenomenal (compare the two covers above). Dike Ruan and Moreno Disnisio created an entire story in this image, and if I were still buying stuff off the spinner racks and saw this image without a heavy black title treatment, I would have picked it up just to have it in my collection.

 

 

The book itself is way more flat than that reprint cover image, but they already had me with that hook, so I continued on my journey and saw some pretty interesting things along the way.

Della Fonte’s work is solid. It’s akin to pulp-adventure journal drawings or those sketches you see on the credits of old movies. It’s not bad; it just looks like something drawn over something else.

The buildings and vehicles are a bit too detailed, as if they were crafted using references in a layer that was turned off after the page was “finished.” The figure drawings and gestures are a bit flat. That would totally work as it is very consistent, but Nightcrawler’s body and clothing look detailed, and often his tail feels like an insert or afterthought that was not given as steady a line or attention as the rest of the composition. It’s not bad art … it’s just not speaking to me the way that cover image did, so I feel disappointed.

 

 

Hesle’s colors in this book are fantastic, though. The whole tone of the book is carried by these colors. They really unify the art even when other things jump out and make me go, “Why was that the choice?” breaking the immersion. The colorwork in this book should be studied.

The palette is fantastic. The transition from diurnal to nocturnal is rich, warm, and full of life thanks to the colorwork doing a ton of heavy lifting. It sells the book for me in a lot of ways. If I saw this on a shelf, clocked that cover, and was blown away, then flipped through the pages and saw the color work, I would purchase this title. I’m a fan of really well-done color work in sequential storytelling. Hesle is really doing the heavy lifting for me here.

-Spoilers Follow-

The story kicks off with Stryker, a Cardinal, showing up in New York City at a large church with his honor guard. He’s there to talk with Nightcrawler, a priest. Stryker has a letter from the Pope, who says he is in New York to kill mutant vampires and is letting Nightcrawler know as a courtesy, but also to put him on notice that he’s there to kill mutants. Something he does not want Nightcrawler or his church, which seems to have some other mutants among its ranks of nuns and such, to get in the way.

 

 

The story shifts slightly, and we have a few pages of a flashback with no real information, backgrounds, or otherwise, showcasing Vampire Storm biting Phoenix. Then we jump again to the present, where it is tomorrow, October 6th, 2026, and we have a small group of humans breaking into a boarded-up building and going down underground where they find techno-coffins and refer to the space as one of the “Strongholds.”

There is also mention of various Vampire tribes; I’m going to call them clans because using tribes for a bunch of white people feels weird and problematic. So … clans, giving me big Vampire: The Masquerade TTRPG vibes and immediately making me think about where they are going to market these various “clans” or collectives of vampire mutants in the future. WizKids HeroClix sets? A TTRPG? Various books with different stories inside?

This immediately screamed “Pick your side” and social media posts that ask you to “find your Mutant coven” on Instagram Reels or TikTok with links to deep lore dives and speculations leading back to Facebook Video and YouTube.

The humans are soon treated to the teeth of the mutant vampires from the techno-coffins, and then we are off again to another dark corner of NYC where we find the House of X.

 

 

The House of X consists of Tode, Quicksilver, Magneto, The Scarlett Witch, Polaris, Havok, and Unus the Untouchable, of all people. Unus is a mutant who can create a force field around himself, but he’s a deep cut as far as I know in the X-Men space, so it was kind of cool to see him showing up in this story. The House of X is talking about the Toriac clan of mutant vampires having a stronghold under the Watchtower and how they can’t mess with it because there is a “peace” between all these vampire mutant clans.

This whole thing further leans into a homebrew mashup between Vampire: The Masquerade and something like Mutants & Masterminds or the Marvel Multiverse TTRPG. It’s just giving “fragile peace, shadow conflicts, secret wars, eventually it all bubbles over and there is a full-blown clan war in the city” kind of story arc that is traditionally what is happening in any Vampire: The Masquerade story.

 

 

We slip back to the killing floor where the humans from earlier in the issue are getting eaten by the mutant vampires. Gambit, Robert “Glob” Herman, Psylock, and Empath arrive on the scene and start making short work of the other vampires. In the tussle, Gambit very clearly tells the surviving human, who they realize is a mutant a few pages later, that they do not care about humans and she is just meat and collateral damage.

I love a vampire comic. American Vampire is one of my favorite books of all time, and I have original art of Skinner Sweet framed in my office. I have run hundreds of hours of Vampire: The Masquerade at the TTRPG table. I am currently playing Blood of the Dawnwalker, and  I took a class focused on Dracula for a whole semester. All that said, Gambit and his little squad’s dialogue felt like something out of Twilight to me.

They feel like they are too hard. You know those hissy-fang-flicking, strike-a-pose vampire cosplayers you cringe at? I’m not going to yuck someone’s yum, but like … if you are not only an immortal monster, but you also have a rad mutant power, why are you being such a tryhard?

 

 

Gambit and his little sparkle vampires are quickly blasted by a bearded Cyclops after they do a little bit of vampire posing around and acting cringy. Gambit and Cyclops clearly have some kind of beef and do a standoff where Cyclops, who is a character I typically dislike, being “The Last X-Man” in this story, is kind of working for me.

Cyclops grabs the newly discovered mutant, talks a bit of shit to Gambit, then blasts a hole in the ceiling. This lets in a bunch of sunlight, obliterating Empath, burning Gambit, and causing a general amount of destruction.

Then, old Scott Summers uses a Batman grappling hook thing to … swing away with the girl.

I would typically think this is really stupid, but honestly, this was the moment I was like … okay, I’m going to review and finish this book. It’s over the top of dumb, but it works somehow with all the other stuff going on. In fact, it actually made me like the story and start the whole issue over.

Then we find out the new mutant kid’s name is Hope!

And she looks like Hope Summers … so … yeah … I’m here for it.

We then jump back to Nightcrawler picking flowers outside. We get a day-to-night transition and an absolutely epic-looking Vampire Storm shows up. I mean, she looks phenomenal with her hair and whole vibe. 10/10 Storm design for this series in my humble opinion.

The issue wraps up with us learning Storm and Nightcrawler were lovers who still seem to harbor some love for each other. Nightcrawler tells Storm the humans have been sent to kill her. She does not really care, as she is not only Storm but a Vampire. We then learn that the vampires are not openly at war with each other because “the peace must hold” is a motto they all live by, and then Nightcrawler asks, “What happens if it doesn’t?”

Thunderbolt.

Storm looking all toothsome.

To be continued…

 

 

Until next time, Midnight X-Men: Teeth is an intriguing alternate reality story full of classic characters viewed through a horrifying lens. Beyond that, there is a story here that is laced with mystery and is gripping enough that I want to know what happens next.

My hope is that Blade is what happens next. I really, really want to see Blade come through and just really mess everyone up. I also like Cyclops in this book a lot so far. The next issue has him on the cover and what looks like Beast, Jean, and Angel, so who knows what is going to happen. Guess we will have to wait and see.