Marvel's new horror line sold out before a single copy reached a shelf. Marvel says Midnight X-Men, Midnight Spider-Man and Midnight Fantastic Four #1 passed one million combined orders, and second printings are already set for October 28. All three #1s came out Wednesday, October 7.
Final order cutoff for all three #2s is Monday, October 12. That gives you five days with the first issue before your shop has to lock in its order on the second. Most readers will barely have finished #1 by then, and a shop that guesses low on #2 is the reason a book gets hard to find in November.
The full guide: every Midnight book, all the #1 and #2 covers, and every order-by date on one page. Marvel Midnight: every book, every date →
Midnight is Marvel's horror line, and it runs on alternate-universe versions of the heroes, not the main Marvel Universe. It works like DC's Absolute line: new versions of the big names, turned toward horror. Every book is rated Parental Advisory, the #1s are 40 pages at $5.99, and Marvel cleared the rest of its October 7 schedule for them.
Jonathan Hickman writes the X-Men again.
Two covers run across all three books. Ryan Stegman's Bloodbath covers are on every #1, and Clayton Crain's three covers join into one image when you line the books up. If you're the kind of collector who wants the full connecting set, that's three books from three different stacks at your shop.
When a #1 sells out, the reprint gets the big orders and the #2 gets a careful one, because shops have been burned by big #1s that dropped off fast. When the book is good, that careful #2 order is the one that comes up short. You'll see it in November, when the #2 is the copy people are hunting for.
Each #2 has six covers. Lucas Werneck does the Bloodbath covers on all three, and the 1:50 is again the virgin version of the Midnight Special cover (Skan on X-Men, Momoko on Spider-Man, Harvey on Fantastic Four). The 1:25s go to Joshua Swaby, Simone Bianchi and Taurin Clarke. If you read #1 this week and like it, Monday the 12th is your window to tell your shop.
Midnight is not the Midnight Sons. Jed MacKay's Midnight Sons team (Moon Knight, Blade, Clea, Robbie Reyes, Daredevil) is in Marc Spector: Moon Knight, in the main Marvel Universe. It's a separate line. Its #10 does happen to close for ordering the same Monday as the Midnight #2s, so if you follow both, it's one call to your shop.
A cover is not a first appearance. You may have seen talk that the Peach Momoko 1:50 on Spider-Man #1 is the first appearance of a Midnight Black Cat. We haven't been able to confirm it. Marvel describes its Midnight Special covers as spotlights on Midnight versions of the heroes, which is art, not story. We track it as a cover, and we'll only call a first when it shows up inside the book.
Marvel has a Midnight panel at New York Comic Con on Friday, October 9, and has said more Midnight news is coming there. Two of the writers have talked about more books in the works, but no new titles are announced yet. We put every Midnight book, cover and date on one page, Marvel Midnight: every book, every date, and we'll update it after the panel.
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