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Marvel Midnight hasn’t even launched yet, and Marvel is already talking internally about more books
Marvel Midnight is saving some major heroes for later: “I don’t want to waste an opportunity for someone else”
NewsbyChris Arrant, Editor-in-Chief
Published on Mon Aug 31 2026
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Marvel Comics is making extra effort to stage the upcoming Marvel Midnight launch as a big hit. From longtime publisher Dan Buckley taking a first-time hands-on approach to this as an editor, to delaying the launch two months to make sure the marketing matched the creative, revising its October 2026 schedule and moving its existing titles out of the way so the three Midnight books could be the only new Marvel books on the shelves for one week, and even getting Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige onboard, Marvel Comics are working to turn everything in their favor… and now, more than a month away from launch, they’re already planning for expansion.
According to AIPT’s David Brooke, Midnight Fantastic Four writer Percy said that “discussions are already underway” about additional Midnight books beyond just Midnight Fantastic Four, Midnight Spider-Man, and Midnight X-Men.
“I think we’re all being pretty careful [in not adding too much to our books], because we want to give other artists and writers the opportunity to create origin stories within the Midnight Universe,” Percy tells Chris Hassan of AIPT in a recent podcast.
Midnight Spider-Man writer Phillip Kennedy Johnson expands on that, saying they’re keeping other characters off-limits not just to protect the potential of future Midnight series, but also because going too big too fast makes it feel too small, too fast.
“There have been opportunities in my stories to have an almost flippant appearance of somebody big, but I don’t want to waste those,” Johnson says on that very same podcast. “I feel like, in a way, it makes worlds feel smaller because every couple pages there’s Hank Pym, there’s so and so, there’s Wasp… if you’re just constantly, constantly doing it,… not to throw shade, but in Star Wars where there’s constantly stuff happening on Tatooine. You’ve got the whole galaxy. Sometimes, if you use the same reference too many times or use too many of them too quickly, it makes the world feel smaller instead of bigger. I’d rather see the world get bigger than smaller.”
That being said, Johnson says that there will be “familiar elements” that pop up.
“Like if you pay attention, you’ll see names of companies appear, but I don’t want to waste an opportunity for someone else.”
Midnight Spider-Man, Midnight Fantastic Four, and Midnight X-Men all launch on October 7.
Interested? Here’s where to find your closest local comic store, courtesy of Sweet, and here’s a guide to how (and where) to read comics online. If you’re looking for the best comics in recent memory, check out the Eisner Awards winners and the Harvey Awards nominees. And if you like free comics, here’s everything we know about Free Comic Book Day 2027.
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Chris Arrant: Chris Arrant is the Popverse’s Editor-in-Chief. He has written about pop culture for USA Today, Life, Entertainment Weekly, Publisher’s Weekly, Marvel, Newsarama, CBR, and more. He has acted as a judge for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, the Harvey Awards, and the Stan Lee Awards. (He/him)
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