Midnight: Marvel Turns the Lights Off
- Jason Daniel
- 6 days ago
- 4 min read
MARVEL COMICS · NEW UNIVERSE · 10/07/26 · 3 PREMIERE ISSUES · 10 COVERS EACH · FROM $4.79
Marvel isn't rebooting its universe. It's turning the lights off in the one it has.
On October 7, three number ones land on the same day under one banner: MIDNIGHT. Not a crossover, not an event you need a checklist for — a separate, self-contained corner where the heroes you know were built by horror instead of hope. As the Midnight: X-Men solicit puts it: "An all-new, all-disturbing universe begins here."
"The clock strikes midnight, and it's the dark dawn of a new era."
The Three Premieres
Midnight: X-Men #1 — Jonathan Hickman
The shadows of New York City are stalked by vampires and the mutant empyres. A sword of Damocles hangs over the peace between the two species — and over the factions inside each of them. An outright war is brewing, and the unturned get caught in the crossfire. Hickman returns to the X-Men with, in Marvel's words, a hunger for blood. Rated Parental Advisory.
Ten covers · Main $4.79 (was $5.99) · Jeehyung Lee virgin 1:25 $19.99 · Skan virgin 1:50 $39.99 · Ito virgin 1:100 $79.99
Midnight: Fantastic Four #1 — Benjamin Percy & Kev Walker
First steps into darkness. An obsessive scientist digs into secrets of the universe best left unknown, and leaves himself and three others warped in strange and horrifying ways. What lies in the new dimensions they found — and can humanity survive the discovery? Percy (Wolverine, Punisher) and Walker (Infernal Hulk, Doctor Strange) turn the FF's origin into a story about secrets that should have stayed buried. Rated Parental Advisory.
Ten covers · Main $4.79 (was $5.99) · Jeehyung Lee virgin 1:25 $19.99 · Ben Harvey virgin 1:50 $39.99 · Rod Reis virgin 1:100 $79.99
Midnight: Spider-Man #1
A young man is transformed into a hideous spider hybrid by Oscorp, in the corporation's pursuit of eternal life. When Oscorp starts using the secrets unlocked by his mutation to build more human-animal hybrids, he has to embrace his grotesque new form to fight back. No radioactive accident. No luck. Just a company that grew him on purpose.
Ten covers · Main $4.79 (was $5.99) · Jeehyung Lee virgin 1:25 $19.99 · Peach Momoko virgin 1:50 $39.99 · Inhyuk Lee virgin 1:100 $79.99
Why Midnight Is Worth Your Slot
Three #1s, zero homework. All three premieres drop on 10/07/26 in a brand-new continuity. There is no back issue you're behind on and no event you need to have read.
Hickman back on the X-Men. The writer whose last X-Men run reset the entire franchise returns to the same characters, this time with vampires and a species war instead of an island.
Horror first, superhero second. The FF's origin becomes body horror. Spider-Man's becomes corporate biotech. These aren't dark-and-gritty reskins; the genre itself has changed.
Clayton Crain connects all three. Crain's covers form a three-part connecting piece across X-Men, Fantastic Four and Spider-Man. Buy the set and you own one image.
Identical cover architecture. Every title runs the same ten-cover ladder — seven open-order covers plus a 1:25, a 1:50 and a 1:100 virgin. Easy to complete a matched set across all three books.
The Unturned
CTX ORIGINAL FICTION — a short piece written from nothing but the three solicitations. No spoilers; nobody has read these yet.
There is a version of this city where the worst thing on the subway at 2 a.m. is another person.
Not this one. In this one the peace is a piece of paper, and everybody who signed it is counting the hours until somebody else breaks it first. Vampires on one side. Mutant empyres on the other. A sword hanging over the whole arrangement by a thread that nobody in either camp has any real interest in checking on.
And then there's the rest of us. The unturned. The ones with no fangs and no gene and no faction, who go to work and come home and pretend the treaty is about us.
Uptown, a scientist is very close to something. He has been very close for years. Three other people are standing near enough to him to be included in whatever he is close to, which is the part of the story he has not thought carefully about. When it happens it will not look like an accident, because it won't be one. It will look like an answer, and it will be warped, and it will not fit back into the shape of a person.
Downtown, in a building with a logo on it, something is growing that used to be somebody's son. The company that grew him is not evil in the way people mean when they say the word. The company simply wants to live forever, and it has found that the fastest road there runs straight through a boy and a spider and a locked room.
The clock is at 11:59 in three places at once. None of them know about each other yet.
That's the only mercy in the whole arrangement, and it expires in October.
Original short fiction by CTX Comics, extrapolated solely from the publisher's solicitations for Midnight: X-Men #1, Midnight: Fantastic Four #1 and Midnight: Spider-Man #1. It is not an excerpt from any of the issues and does not reflect their actual contents.
All three Midnight #1s are on sale 10/07/26 at 20% off cover. Grab the Clayton Crain connecting set across all three before the ratios thin out.
Solicit information courtesy of the publisher. Covers, prices and availability current as of publication and subject to change. All characters and artwork are © their respective owners.
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