Today was supposed to be a really fucking exciting day to be a comic book fan. Marvel’s Midnight Universe launched […]
Today was supposed to be a really fucking exciting day to be a comic book fan.
Marvel’s Midnight Universe launched today with the first issues of Midnight Spider-Man, Midnight X-Men, and Midnight Fantastic Four. Three familiar properties rebuilt through horror, arriving while DC’s Absolute Universe continues to deliver some of the most exciting superhero comics I’ve read in my entire life.
If there’s a character I love more than Batman, it’s Spider-Man. And even though Absolute Batman has become my favorite comic book of all time, I was hoping Midnight Spider-Man would reinvigorate my love of Peter Parker and give me another book to look forward to every month.
I just finished the first issue, and I gotta tell you, I fucking hated it.
It’s hollow, mean, cruel, and surprisingly unfun. For a book promising such an extreme reinvention, it moves at a slog. And it leaves me worrying that Marvel has learned precisely the wrong lessons from what’s happening across the street.
Spoilers forMidnight Spider-Man#1 follow.
I had my concerns when Marvel started showing us the book. The announcement felt try-hard and reactionary, although the grotesque transformation imagery also had me excited. Spider-Man by way of The Fly? There’s absolutely something there.
After 25 years in the movie business, I’ve watched this happen over and over: something connects with an audience, and everyone chases the most obvious thing about it. Rarely does anything change. The violence, the look, the concept become the lesson, while the storytelling that made any of it matter gets lost.
That’s what this first issue feels like to me. I can’t tell you what happened inside Marvel’s offices, but I can tell you what I was hoping to feel when I opened the comic, and how little of it I found.
What makes Absolute Batman work is the relationship between Scott Snyder’s writing and Nick Dragotta’s art. The story, the character designs, the action, and the feel of Gotham seem to come from the same place. These guys understand the version of Batman they’re building.
And they’ve talked about that directly.
“But all the decisions go back to story first, and who this Bruce is,” Dragotta told DC in their launch interview, discussing the opportunity to reinvent the character. Snyder described an approach that preserves the heroes’ essential qualities while changing their circumstances to confront fears people recognize today.
You can feel that purpose in the books. Kelly Thompson and Hayden Sherman’sAbsolute Wonder Woman has been a beaming bright spot of joy alongside Batman’s darker brutality. Jason Aaron and Rafa Sandoval’sAbsolute Superman is another fantastic reinvention. Different creative teams, different approaches, and characters whose identities run deeper than their familiar costumes and origin stories.
The actual foundation of the Absolute Universe makes this even more interesting. It’s a reality shaped by Darkseid, fueled by Omega energy associated with destruction and control. The heroes face a world designed to make their lives harder. Hope has more to overcome here.
But the books themselves don’t feel hopeless to me.
Snyder put it beautifully in a more recent DC interview: “These characters are supposed to make us feel brave.” He also discussed how Dragotta’s art can move between tender, intimate emotion and enormous, manga-influenced action.
That combination is everything.
Bruce Wayne becoming a blue-collar worker while Joker becomes the billionaire fundamentally changes their relationship. The social commentary is right there, but so is a character who refuses to accept the world as it’s been handed to him. And as you keep reading, you see this intricate web forming between the characters, the villains, and the reveals. Earlier details take on new meaning. It feels purposeful.
I can’t know when every beat was conceived, but reading it feels like watching something carefully planted grow into something enormous. It’s manga-style world-building at its best.
And it’s fucking fun.
Absolute Batman grounds its characters in recognizable human problems, then goes completely wild with what happens around them. At its most excessive, it hits Akira levels of absurdity. It’s joyous and chaotic to experience, even when horrible things are happening to people you care about. The breakneck pace keeps it from becoming a slog.
It reminds me of the difference in how I experience Terrifier versus Saw. Part of what makes Terrifier’s extremity work for me is the absurdity of it. The excess becomes its own kind of outrageous spectacle. Absolute Batman finds a similar pleasure in seeing just how far this thing can go.
There’s cruelty within that world, obviously. But I don’t feel a mean-spirited energy coming from the book itself.
With Midnight Spider-Man, that’s practically all I felt.
Written by Phillip Kennedy Johnson and illustrated by ScieTronc, the first issue includes a father begging to be allowed to pick up his daughter while he’s being experimented on. His face erupts, his insides come pouring out of his mouth, and the scientists laugh at him and mock him. And don’t even get me started on the revisionist take on Uncle Ben’s death…
Those are the moments that really lost me.
The setup calls to mind Street Trash: vulnerable people treated as disposable bodies, with grotesque physical consequences. But that movie’s over-the-top absurdity is a huge part of the experience. Here, the father’s ordinary, recognizable concern about his daughter becomes another way to make his suffering worse.
I understand that we’re supposed to hate the people doing this. I understand what experimenting on vulnerable people says about power. But watching this particular scene, I felt the book lingering on humiliation without giving me enough beyond it.
It’s not that Midnight Spider-Man is gross. I wanted gross. I was excited about gross. It’s the way the cruelty is delivered that leaves the whole thing feeling empty to me.
Marvel has been clear about the project’s priorities. At San Diego Comic-Con, Dan Buckley described wanting “horror in the front seat and superhero in the back,” as reported by Popverse.
Fine. I’m a horror fan. That should be an invitation.
But I still need something that makes me want to spend time in this world. Fear, fascination, emotional investment, outrageous fun… something that carries me through the ugliness. This first issue never gave me enough of that. We don’t even get through Peter’s transformation into Spider-Man before it ends, and the setup hasn’t made me eager to reach it.
To be fair, Johnson’s stated intentions are more substantial than simply making Spider-Man disgusting.
Speaking with AIPT, he emphasized that “it’s still a story about power and responsibility.” His Peter wants to use power responsibly while confronting a world where power turns people monstrous. The interview also describes regular collaboration among the Midnight writers, story summits, and extensive outlining. These creators do have plans.
So I’m not going to pretend Marvel hasn’t thought beyond the launch, or claim that one issue tells me how every thread will pay off. It doesn’t. And my disappointment with Midnight Spider-Man isn’t a verdict on the other two books.
But that first issue is rough, man.
There’s a difference between having a long-term story and making someone care enough to follow it. I can understand the thematic intention Johnson is describing and still feel that the comic in front of me fails to deliver an engaging first chapter.
Obviously, things can change. Maybe the second issue brings everything into focus. Maybe this becomes something far more interesting than its introduction suggests. I’m just not sure I plan to read that second issue, which is a pretty miserable place to land after being this excited about a new Spider-Man book.
My worry is that Marvel will get plenty of curiosity out of the gate and then lose readers very quickly. Only time will tell. But once that first impression has pushed someone away, getting them back is its own problem.
You can’t fake excitement, and you can’t fake fun.
I wanted another comic I couldn’t wait to read every month. After Midnight Spider-Man #1, I’m already wondering whether I’ll come back.
