Marvel's Midnight Universe Asks a Tougher Question Than Absolute Ever Did
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DC's Absolute line asks what its heroes look like stripped down and compromised. Marvel's new Midnight Universe asks something meaner: what if the good guys were simply monsters?
Marvel's Ultimate Universe begat Absolute. Absolute will begat whatever comes next, because it always does. Midnight feels like a sibling rather than an imitation — a place to take good characters and ask what they become when the transformation is not a metaphor but a mutation into something horrible. It is going to get weird and dark. It is probably going to be a blast.
A Darker Kind of What-If
The Midnight books are not an Absolute knockoff, and the distinction matters. Where Absolute takes familiar heroes and pushes them into harsher, darker circumstances, Midnight starts from a tougher premise — the heroes are horrors. The Spider-Man launch reportedly turns Peter into an actual spider. The Fantastic Four go up on their fateful exploration and come back changed into something grotesque. This is less a compromised-hero exercise like Absolute and more Marvel Zombies territory.
Hickman Back in the X-Lab
Jonathan Hickman anchors the rollout with Midnight X-Men, and his track record makes the pitch land. The vision here is a world where vampires and mutants hold an uneasy truce, a balance of power between monstrous factions — Storm as a vampire, Nightcrawler in something close to Catholic vestments while fanged. Readers who love a supernatural power-brokering premise, the kind of standing-accord world found in City of Bones or the Dresden Files, will find a lot to chew on. Hickman has also quietly written strong horror before, so the tonal shift plays to a real strength.
The Multiverse Comics Podcast — with Stephen, Jason, and Scott — is available wherever you get your podcasts.