DC’s Absolute Universe continues to absolutely tear up the comic book industry. Absolute Batman became the biggest-selling ongoing comic series […]
Well, now we’ve seen pages from the Midnight Spider-Man ashcan, and that Fly homage suddenly makes a hell of a lot more sense.
This Peter Parker isn’t simply bitten by a radioactive spider.
According to Marvel’s official description, Oscorp transforms Peter into a hideous spider hybrid while pursuing eternal life. And the preview pages appear to take that concept into full-blown Cronenbergian body horror.
Peter seemingly isn’t just gaining the abilities of a spider.
He’s become merged with one.
Most grotesquely, the familiar spider emblem on his chest appears to be an actual spider embedded within his body, its legs stretching across his torso as part of him.
It’s fucking disgusting.
It also makes that The Fly homage feel much less like a cool variant-cover gimmick and much more like Marvel telling us exactly what kind of transformation story we’re getting.
Think Seth Brundle becoming Brundlefly, except now it’s Peter Parker slowly becoming whatever the hell Spider-Man actually means in this universe.
It sounds like the same horror logic is being applied across the other two books.
Midnight X-Men throws mutants into a New York overrun by vampires, with mutant “Empyres” and vampires seemingly headed toward war. That makes its gorgeous Fright Night homage pretty damn appropriate.
Then there’s Midnight Fantastic Four, which Marvel describes as beginning when an obsessive scientist explores dimensions humanity probably should have left the fuck alone, leaving himself and three others “warped in strange and horrifying ways.” Writer Benjamin Percy has specifically described his approach as cosmic, Lovecraftian dread.
And yes, the Horror Homage cover by E.M. Gist sure as hell appears to be invoking John Carpenter’s The Thing.
So maybe we’re looking at three pretty clear horror templates:
Spider-Man meets The Fly.
X-Men meets Fright Night.
Fantastic Four meets The Thing.
That’s considerably more interesting to me than simply making everyone “dark.”
I’m still staring at this entire Midnight experiment with one eyebrow raised. It feels a bit try-hard and very much like Marvel seeing what’s happening across the street with Absolute and wanting its own version immediately.
But Marvel has also had enormous success taking its superheroes into horror before with Marvel Zombies.
And if these Spider-Man pages are any indication, they’re not fucking around.
An actual spider living inside Peter Parker’s chest? Yes, please.
