Posted in: Comics, Marvel Comics, Spider-Man, X-Men | Tagged: dan buckley, jonathan hickman, midnight
The Dan Buckley And Jonathan Hickman Phone Call That Began Midnight
The Dan Buckley And Jonathan Hickman Phone Call That Began Marvel’s Midnight Universe
Article Summary
- Dan Buckley’s phone call with Jonathan Hickman in February 2026 sparked Marvel’s horror-first Midnight Universe plan.
- The Midnight Universe aims to keep Marvel’s biggest heroes front and center while making horror the core genre.
- Hickman quickly brought in Benjamin Percy and Phillip Kennedy Johnson, echoing Ultimate Universe-style creator chemistry.
- Spider-Man, X-Men and Fantastic Four lead Midnight with body horror, vampires and Lovecraftian reinventions.
Today is the Final Order Cut-Off date for comic book retailers to set their orders for Marvel Comics’ Midnight Universe launch titles. And just as, on the 7th of October, the only comics Marvel will publish will be the three Midnight Universe titles, I thought I’d have fun and write only Marvel Midnight Universe-related stories today. Let’s see how it goes, shall we? Here’s a Midnight tag for whatever else I write about Midnight on Bleeding Cool today. So how did it all begin?
Midnight Spider-Man #1
Midnight X-Men #1
Midnight Fantastic Four #1
Well, Marvel Comics found success a while ago with the Ultimate Universe, a new, separate continuity that reworked their main characters, so well that they did it twice. Then DC Comics had a go with the Earth One graphic novels, which did okay but were sporadic, and then Absolute Universe, which did even better, with Absolute Batman becoming the best-selling ongoing comic book series for decades. So the question was: how could Marvel get a bit of that Absolute action without a) completely ripping it off or b) doing a third version of the Ultimate Universe?
Dan Buckley is (still) the Publisher of Marvel Comics until the summer of next year. And while then-Marvel EIC C.B. Cebulski was travelling back in February 2026, Buckley called Jonathan Hickman, who has become Marvel’s go-to boy for big swings, including the Krakoan Age for the X-Men, and Time Runs Out for the Avengers, which has inspired the two upcoming Avengers movies, to ask him what he thought about horror. And specifically a Marvel horror line. But rather than the B-list characters of Ghost Rider, Morbius, Man Thing, Blade and the like. Dan Buckley wanted to make sure that horror stayed in the front seat, keep the big superhero names like Ultimate and Absolute did, but push the superhero stuff to the back. Rather than superhero books with a horror genre laid on top. Midnight is meant to be, very distinctly, the reverse of that.
Jonathan Hickman then asked to get Benjamin Percy and Philip Kennedy Johnson on the phone. Dan Buckley spoke to them all, saw the three of them on the same page almost immediately, and going forward has compared this to Brian Bendis and Mark Millar finding a common creative collaboration for the original Ultimate Universe, and finishing each other’s sentences and/or sandwiches.
There was no assigned list of characters, but Phillip Kennedy Johnson did not wait to be offered one. He just waited until Dan 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, as a Cronenberg/Carpenter/Junji Ito body-horror concept, and how that spins out into everyone from the Green Goblin to Venom. More on this to come.
Jonathan Hickman jumping back onto the X-Men characters is an attempt to change what readers think of when they consider a Jonathan Hickman X-Men comic book, as it will be nothing like his House Of X comic books. Aside from the text pages, of course. It’s an epic, operatic, vampire comic, and includes stuff he’s been playing around with in the back of his head for a really long time.
While Benjamin Percy’s Fantastic Four is none of these things, it’s HP Lovecraft, and also, at least at the beginning, they are not a family, and if it becomes one, it may well be defined more by their toxic relationships, but it’s the facing of horrors within that helps them face the horrors without.
That’s how it began… much more to come today about where it goes forward. Keep clicking the Midnight tab…
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