Previously On X-Men: Sink Your Teeth Into The Intricate World of ‘Midnight X-Men’ #1

There’s only one X-book out this week, and it’s the alt-reality Midnight X-Men, so I’m skipping ahead to break it down while it’s still hot off the presses!

Midnight X-Men #1

By Jonathan Hickman, Matteo Della Fonte, Arthur Hesli & Cory Petit

Cardinal Stryker arrives in New York City as tensions mount amongst the city’s various factions of vampires.

• Hickman is, of course, the chief architect of the Krakoa Era, having launched that storyline in 2019’s House of X and Powers of X miniseries. This is his first work on the X-Men since leaving following the Inferno miniseries, at roughly the halfway point of the Krakoa Era.
• Cardinal Stryker is presumably this world’s version of Reverend Stryker, the anti-mutant zealot and central antagonist of “God Loves, Man Kills” (who was later turned into a military figure to serve as a recurring antagonist in the Fox X-Men films). The Purifiers were the name of his militant followers.
• Amara Aquilla is Magma, one of the New Mutants, who hails from the lost Roman city in the Amazon jungle called Nova Roma.
• The flashback showing Vampire Storm feeding on Phoenix seems significant (especially given who turns up at the end).
• Citizen Tilby aka Trish Tilby is usually a news reporter with a soft spot for mutants. She debuted in Louise Simonson‘s X-Factor, dated Beast for awhile, and briefly went with some X-Men into Shi’ar space to fight the Phalanx.
• “Mutant Vampires” to “M-pires” to “Empyres” is just a chef’s kiss of a pun. Kudos to you, Hickman.
• Presumably, these Empyres are entirely unrelated from the 2020 cosmic crossover of the same name.
• The House of X introduced here includes Magneto, his sometimes-children Polaris, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, Havok (who is often romantically linked to Polaris), Toad, and Unus the Untouchable (Silver Age villains involved in various iterations of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants). There’s a notable House of M vibe to their setup, another alternate reality story in which the Magneto family was a notable power player.
• The cybernetic vampires seem more like zombies, eating organs and flesh, not just drinking blood. But maybe that’s how vampires in this reality are.
• The Vampire X-Men who disrupt their feeding are Gambit, Glob Herman, Empath (from the Hellions as well as Hellions) and Psylocke, wearing her Lady Mandarin armor from Uncanny X-Men #256-258.
• The statute of Exodus — who has long been depicted as a devout if zealous Christian — outside Nightcrawler’s church suggests he played some kind of notable role in the church’s battles with vampires.
• Love seeing the return of the data pages (this one is from the “Muir Institute”). Replacing silver with adamantium as the metallic kryptonite of the supernatural is clever, and the idea that older vampires can sustain longer periods in sunlight is a fun twist as well (one that is presumably setting up a significant plot point down the line).
• Cyclops’ Big Damn Hero Moment? 10/10, no notes.
• Gambit mentions “Healer” – this is presumably the Morlock Healer.
• Hope Summers debuted in Messiah Complex #1, as the first mutant baby born after M-Day (when Scarlet Witch used her power to erase all but the commercially-viable mutants from the world), kicking off a long-running story in which she was prophesized to be a messiah for mutantkind and ultimately did help bring mutants back. She was the leader of the Five (the mutant circuit which enabled resurrection) during the Krakoa Era, when it was also established that she is the child of the Phoenix Force (see above re: Vampire Storm chomping on Phoenix).

I’ve never been the biggest fan of X-Men/vampire stories — sure, it was fun that one time that Dracula had a crush on Storm, but then Jubilee got stuck as a vampire for way too long after fighting Dracula when he had his stupid ponytail — so it was with some trepidation that I approached this book. But I ended up thoroughly enjoying this, largely because of the complex weave of alliances and counter alliances Hickman is setting up (something I really dug about the Krakoa Era as well) and the not-surprising attention to detail he’s put into the lore of this new setting.

Della Fonte is not an artist I’m familiar with, but his work is subtle and engaging and exciting, well-suited for the more classical horror tone of this series (tip of the hat to Arthur Hesli’s colors, as well, which manage to depict a variety of dark/nighttime settings in clear and distinct ways). Plus, Cyclops kicked ass. Can’t wait for more. – 9/10

Check out Anton’s full review of the issue here.