Midnight Spider-Man #1 Review

Dan McMahonOctober 7, 2026

By now, you know the Spider-Man myth. A spider bite, the understanding that with great power comes great responsibility, and a death that falls forever on Peter Parker’s conscience. But the clock is at Midnight and everything has changed. Midnight Spider-Man #1 uses horror to strip Spider-Man’s oldest lesson of its comfort. Here, power doesn’t come with responsibility. It makes monsters, and the real horror is the system that makes them. What’s left to find out is whether one of those monsters can still choose to be good.

During a recent interview with Phillip Kennedy Johnson, he talked about the moment of horror that has stuck with him for his entire life. It was looking into the face of necrosis and rot with a dead animal. That rooted trauma blossoms into the corpse flower that kicks off Midnight Spider-Man and instills a very different message in a young Peter Parker after his cat’s death. His father, Richard Parker, teaches him a powerful lesson.

“Power makes monsters, every time. The stronger something is, the more monstrous it becomes and monsters just do what they do.”

This lesson quickly becomes the thesis of this very new approach to the web-slinger. We aren’t following someone grappling with his power and what he must do with it, but rather a monster given massive power and the opportunity to wield it for change. But we see that power corrupts and turns so many familiar Marvel concepts into monsters. An innate fear suggests this power, too, will turn Peter into a monster of immeasurable cruelty.

*Midnight Spider-Man* #1 / Johnson, ScieTronc, Menon, Caramagna / Marvel Comics

That festering rot of his own shortcomings rears its head so often through this debut issue. The failure of the pet that relied on him is displayed by gut-wrenchingly beautiful art by ScieTronc, with colors by Neeraj Menon. Beauty in the decomposition appears again and again in Peter’s mind of his pet. His cat relied on him and reminded him that one small mistake could be fatal. Failure is a constant fear that fuels so many people because even a slight miscalculation can cost you the people you love.

But what if you are promised power to ensure those things don’t happen? That is where organizations like Oscorp, HAMMER, and other familiar names come into play. Through Peter’s “Sagan Ritual” blog, we get a glimpse of what the rich and powerful use science to achieve. This isn’t like a main line book where an organization like A.I.M. has a bunch of goons in matching yellow hazmat suits fighting heroes. Instead, it’s a more realistic, if not elevated, horror look at what real companies get away with because of their power. That power they have has made them monsters who play god with mortal lives on a scale unmatched by any mainstream counterpart.

Cruelty is on full display with a test we see being done at Oscorp. The poor aren’t even treated as people by those who look down on them. The test subject who meets a grisly end is referred to as “piggy,” as if he is just an animal for the slaughter. With scenes of such callous brutality, Phillip Kennedy Johnson and the team show that this book is baring its fangs from the jump. Horror isn’t about comfort; it’s the gnawing away of humanity by those who become monsters when given the power to execute their own will.

I worried when the Midnight line was first announced, fearing Marvel might just be reheating the Absolute nachos. Thankfully, this book proves the imprint is completely original. While the Absolute line has elements of horror, Midnight is rooted in it. Phillip Kennedy Johnson uses horror to explore the real world through a fabricated lens. There is a scene in this issue where a brutal “arrest” takes place by Hammer right outside the truck where Peter and Uncle Ben are having a conversation about fighting back against the powers that be. Horror is constantly going on around all of us every day, but we keep going, and seeing it through this lens is a reminder of how dark the night is right now.

The other major element of the Midnight line, and Midnight Spider-Man in particular, is its fresh artistic voices telling these stories. ScieTronc brings this first issue to life with style and a unique artistic voice of their own. There are clear manga influences in their style, but given the story’s grisly nature, they craft a unique world through their art. Character designs and everyday scenes are just as beautiful as the decaying corpse reprisals or the finale scene in the book. PKJ and ScieTronc take the familiar pieces we know of Spider-Man and blend them into a horrifying story with something to say about the world around us. It bares its fangs with pure majesty for the best Spider-Man #1 in a very long time.

While the essential elements of Spider-Man remain in Midnight Spider-Man, the new thesis of power and monsters warps everything into a macabre universe. Marvel has always strived to be the world outside your window, but with Midnight Spider-Man #1 that window is fractured and distorted through the lens of horror to grapple with power and what monsters can become if left unchecked.