- September 14, 2022
Midnight Suns #1 Review
Written by: Ethan Sacks
Art by: Luigi Zagaria
Coloring by: Antonio Fabela
Lettering by: VC’s Joe Sabino
Editing by: Tom Groneman, Nick Lowe
While it’s obvious this book was supposed to come out with the game, it does not base its story around the same premise. It spins out of Strange Academy, basing the plot around a small character as bigger ones from the game protect her. In terms of plot and action, Midnight Suns doesn’t do much special. There’s a girl who’s destined to destroy the world, the main characters get a vision of it happening, and now they have to find/protect her. It’s standard stuff, but it also knows it.
Rather than try and reinvent the wheel, the comic tries to be self-aware. Wolverine has no place on this team other than to point out how ridiculous everything is. It works for the most part and adds levity to extremely dire circumstances. I do wish the other characters treated the story similarly. As of now, everyone else is either spouting exposition or is a watered-down version of themselves. When you have a new team of characters who are not entirely familiar with each other, this can happen in new #1s.
Thunderbolts attempted to avoid this by really digging into the character interactions. Midnight Suns is far less successful. Magik is where this feels the most egregious to me. There are very few characters who have more personality than her, and she’s one of three characters played straight here. That’s disappointing.
Of course, this is the first issue, so there’s always room to improve, but it’s not the best step forward. This has a really interesting roster, with the only big difference between this and the game is that it uses Kushala’s Ghost Rider instead of Robbie Reyes. She’s a visually cool include, but again, if you didn’t know her beforehand, you’re not learning anything new now.
The art is also… fine… It doesn’t pop out to me or stand out. There’s nothing memorable or bad about it, it just feels like a video game tie-in. By that, I mean it feels flat, detailed in the wrong places, and with little energy in its coloring. The Midnight Suns can be one of Marvel’s new big teams, so I wish they had let this comic cook in the oven a bit more. The game was delayed, so why not delay the comic too?
Do you care about the Midnight Suns? Who do you think should be on the roster? Let me know in the comments below.