Posted in: Comics, Marvel Comics, Spider-Man | Tagged: <a href="https://comicvibe.com/a-first-glimpse-inside-midnight-x/” title=”A First Glimpse Inside Midnight X”>midnight, Midnight Spider-Man, phillip kennedy johnson, Power Makes Monsters, ScieTronc
“Power Makes Monsters” Is The New Moral Behind Midnight Spider-Man
“Power Makes Monsters” Is The New Moral Behind Midnight Spider-Man by Phillip Kennedy Johnson and ScieTronc from Marvel Comics
Article Summary
- Midnight Spider-Man turns Peter Parker into a Cronenberg-style body-horror hero, pushing Marvel’s horror roots to the front.
- The new Midnight Spider-Man moral is “power makes monsters,” replacing the classic Spider-Man lesson on responsibility.
- Phillip Kennedy Johnson says this Peter Parker is not Man-Spider, but a grotesque, singular hybrid shaped by Oscorp’s cruelty.
- Midnight Spider-Man is planned years ahead, with early seeds set to grow as Oscorp, Octavius, and new horrors escalate.
Today is the FOC date for Midnight Universe titles, the last day retailers have to set their Marvel Universe orders. And Bleeding Cool is going to take the day, looking at the titles coming our way. Such as Midnight Spider-Man. So here’s a Midnight tag for whatever else I write about Midnight on Bleeding Cool today. When first discussing what would become the Midnight Universe, Phillip Kennedy Johnson says he just waited untilDan Buckley took a breath before saying that he’d be writing the Spider-Man book. He sees the original concept of Spider-Man already rooted in horror comics, which Marvel Comics has been telling too cleanly, dishonestly so. And Midnight Spider-Man is a Cronenberg/Carpenter/Junji Ito body-horror concept, and how that spins out into everyone from the Green Goblin to Venom.
But the big change is beyond all that. The moral behind the classic Spider-Man is, famously, “with great power there must come great responsibility”, but for Midnight Spider-Man, reflecting the modern day, this is less relevant. Instead, it’s that “power makes monsters”, a lesson Peter Parker learned from his late father, Richard Parker. And that’s the world this Peter Parker lives in, a little like ours, and may be the most comparable to Absolute Batman in that fashion. About one kid who finds power and goes up against the machine, and while he may believe that power should come with responsibility and empathy and virtue, the world just shows him again and again that power makes monsters. And he’s the guy who has to prove that it’s wrong. More on that to come on Bleeding Cool today.
Phillip Kennedy Johnson is also pushing back about anyone seeing this in the fashion of the Marvel character Man-Spider, often seen as the horror version of Spider-Man. But this Peter Parker isn’t transforming further into a spider; he is becoming a grotesquely unique individual with the spider embedded into his chest, with more kinds of Cronenberg stuff to come, and wearing lenses of a World War II Japanese aviator, with series artist ScieTronc‘s manga-influenced style making Peter Parker a kid who reads manga and loves Japanese culture. Again, EIC C.B. Cebulski had nothing to do with this.
Right now, issues one to three are completed, and they are into issue four. It should not be running late. And writer Phillip Kennedy Johnson has planned ahead far further than he already has done on Hulk and Spider-Man, and considers his Midnight Spider-Man series to dwarf everything else, and there are seeds planted in issue one that won’t play out until the third and fourth years at the earliest.
MIDNIGHT SPIDER-MAN #1
MIDNIGHT SPIDER-MAN #1
- MIDNIGHT SPIDER-MAN #1
Written by PHILLIP KENNEDY JOHNSON Art by SCIETRONC
A young man is transformed into a hideous spider hybrid by the ruthless Oscorp Corporation in their pursuit for eternal life. When Oscorp begins to use the secrets unlocked by his mutation to create more human-animal hybrids, he must embrace his grotesque new form to fight back. October 7th 2026 $4.99
- MIDNIGHT SPIDER-MAN #2
Written by PHILLIP KENNEDY JOHNSON Art by SCIETRONC
Where is Peter Parker? A new Oscorp employee is missing. An NYC teaching assistant is missing. In Queens, a municipal services tech didn’t clock in this morning. And for some reason, Oscorp defense contractors are scouring their building’s security tapes…for a spider. Where is Peter Parker? November 18th 2026 $4.99
- MIDNIGHT SPIDER-MAN #3
Written by PHILLIP KENNEDY JOHNSON Art by SCIETRONC
THE PARKER INCIDENT! As Peter Parker frantically searches for a way to reclaim his humanity, Oscorp hunts the emerging urban legend THE SPIDER-MAN in their first breakthrough on the path to a post-mortality future. Meanwhile, in Oscorp’s deepest, most top-secret labs, Doctor Octavius has used the lessons of the “Parker Incident” to engineer the world’s second synthetic mutant… a living horror that will make even Spider-Man obsolete. December 16th 2026 $4.99
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