Posted in: Comics, Marvel Comics, Spider-Man | Tagged: midnight, Midnight Spider-Man, phillip kennedy johnson, ScieTronc
A Look Inside Tomorrow (Tonight)’s Midnight Spider-Man #1 (Spoilers)
A Better Look Inside Tomorrow (Tonight)’s Midnight Spider-Man #1 by Phillip Kennedy Johnson and ScieTronc (Spoilers)
Article Summary
- Midnight Spider-Man #1 reimagines Peter Parker as a body-horror hero, with Oscorp pushing grotesque science too far.
- Phillip Kennedy Johnson swaps Spider-Man’s classic moral for “power makes monsters,” rooted in Peter’s trauma.
- A childhood tragedy involving Peter’s kitten Bamf becomes the haunting origin point driving Midnight Spider-Man #1.
- Peter balances life with Uncle Ben, secret blogging as Sagan Ritual, and looming threats from Oscorp and Felicia Hardy.
A little while ago, I looked at Midnight Spider-Men #1 by Phillip Kennedy Johnsonand ScieTronc from Marvel Comics, based on revealed imagery and previews. Now I have some updated imagery added to what I wrote then (with some fixed typos), some official, some… um… otherwise… before the actual publication tomorrow. I also reported that “Phillip Kennedy Johnson says he just waited until Marvel Comics PublisherDan 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. 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.” Where we learn that the young Peter Parker had a kitten called Bamf.
I talked more about the themes of this book earlier today but here’s how they play out in practice. As Peter Parker, charged with responsibility, forgot to check that Bamf was where they were meant to be. Bamf got out.
And that’s when he learned his most important lesson from his father, Richard Parker, to replace the more classic Stan Lee aphorism.
“Power makes monsters”. And that includes the neighbour’s dog and your kitten that you left alone and got out…
Poor Bamf. And it’s a lesson, it’s a memory that haunts Peter Parker… as well as the imagery of the spider crawling from the corpse of his pet.
These days he’s a bit more back together…
…blogging as Sagan Ritual. On a bunk bed for one. I also said “Midnight Spider-Man #1 will feature blog posts by Sagan Ritual, the name Peter Parker uses to write science-news exposés, often focused on Oscorp. Carl Sagan once said, “If it takes a little myth and ritual to get us through a night that seems endless, who among us cannot sympathise and understand? We long to be here for a purpose, even though, despite much self-deception, none is evident. The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life’s meaning. We long for our parents to care for us, to forgive us our errors, to save us from our childish mistakes. But knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable. Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop. Our common sense intuitions can be mistaken. Our preferences don’t count. We do not live in a privileged reference frame. If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal.” Carl Sagan was the astronomer and astrophysicist who explained the high surface temperatures of Venus resulting from a greenhouse effect, clarified seasonal changes on Mars due to windblown dust, and studied organic molecules in Titan’s haze. He co-designed the Pioneer and Voyager messages intended for potential extraterrestrial finders, was a pioneer in astrobiology, and was a strong advocate for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence…
So even when he’s hanging with his Uncle Ben…
…his sole caregiver in the Midnight Universe…
He’s never far away from the monsters with the power, at Oscorp Industries…
And as you can tell, their employees can be very seductive… such as Felicia Hardy, better known as the Black Cat, working for Oscorp…
MIDNIGHT SPIDER-MAN #1
MIDNIGHT SPIDER-MAN #1
…you know, when they aren’t dealing with their own dead cat situations. I wonder if this comic will come with a feline trigger warning? No cats were harmed in the making of this comic, but quite a few cat owners may be scarred. And as for those blog posts?
Seems like he’s a natural. Midnight Spider-Man #1 is published tomorrow by Marvel Comics… or midnight tonight at participating comic book stores.
- 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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