Jean Grey is a vampire, and so are Storm and Iceman. Keeping the rest of mutantkind in one piece is Magneto, bearded and exhausted, running things from a skyscraper while honoring a peace treaty he obviously can’t stand.
That’s where Midnight: X-Men #1 starts. The issue is the first glimpse of Marvel’s new Midnight continuity, and it comes from Jonathan Hickman, Matteo Della Fonte, Arthur Hesli and Cory Petit. Vampire warfare has torn this world apart, and it looks like most mutants have been turned into undead “Empyres.” Those who survived have rallied behind Magneto in a faction called the House of X, all dressed in identical gray uniforms.
The lineup is loaded and the internal politics are tangled. Below is every member of the team and the powers they bring.
Magneto leads under Xavier’s name
Over the years in the main Marvel Universe, Magneto has played villain, ally and leader to the X-Men. Right now he sits on Cyclops’ roster as a dangerous wildcard WC $0.0003238 ▼ -26.6% willing to kill when mutant lives are on the line. Midnight promotes him to elder statesman for his whole species.
His faction’s name gives the first clue. Magneto’s family has at times gone by the House of M, but “House of X” nods to Charles Xavier, his longtime rival and friend. That hints Magneto sees himself as the one carrying Xavier’s legacy in this timeline.
He has also committed his people to a compact. This peace treaty bars the team from taking direct action against vampires, and maybe against the Empyres as well. Given how much mutants have lost to the undead, the deal is tough to swallow, and the issue makes clear Magneto resents it.
The metal is worth a closer look. Both the interior art and the variant covers show floating metal balls orbiting Magneto, and Johnny Desjardins’ variant cover adds claw marks to his helmet. Adamantium is named as a major vampire weakness. Magneto may well have pulled the adamantium out of an undead Wolverine, which would be the grimmest and cleverest play in the book.
Unus and Toad represent the old guard
Few X-Men foes go back further or hit harder than Unus the Untouchable. His near-impenetrable force fields are a smart fit for a world where one bite is enough to turn a mutant, and he could be guarding the team’s base against outside attack around the clock.
The comic also suggests he works as Magneto’s spymaster, passing along intel on vampire nests and rebel human groups. Since Unus was a criminal before he was a mutant, some of what he learns could come from his old underworld contacts.
Toad was among the first mutants Magneto brought into the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, and he hasn’t wavered even with the world ending. Over time his abilities have included hyper-acrobatics, a prehensile tongue and spit that hardens fast. None of it does much against vampires.
What makes him worth watching is how he reacts when someone doubts Unus’ intel: Toad becomes oddly protective. That might point to a rift in the House of X, with the soldiers who fight in Magneto’s name on one side and the people he treats as family on the other.
Most of the firepower sits with the family
The team’s heaviest hitter is Wanda Maximoff. Chaos Magic lets her reach into the building blocks of reality itself, and in 2005’s House of M she nearly wiped mutants out of existence. There’s a strong chance Midnight will test whether she could pull off the same trick on vampires.
The 2014 AXIS event retconned both her mutant status and her relation to Magneto, and it isn’t clear if that holds in Midnight. Whatever the biology, she counts as Magneto’s family here, together with her brother Quicksilver and Polaris, Magneto’s biological daughter.
Quicksilver ranks among the fastest superhumans alive, and he acts as Magneto’s eyes on the ground. He keeps tabs on rival factions and relies on his speed to ensure no one catches the House of X violating the compact. The same 2014 retcon applied to him as to Wanda, though in this world he may be unaware of it. Since Wanda’s wellbeing tends to be his main motivation, he’ll likely serve as her bodyguard while every faction around chases her power.
Polaris controls magnetism like her father, if a bit less strongly, and she worries about the treaty more than anyone else on the team. Her warning to the others: “the peace must hold.”
The identical gray uniforms prompt a reasonable question as well. Maybe they’re about dignity. Or maybe they contain metal that Magneto and Polaris can turn into a weapon if things fall apart.
Havok, Cyclops’ brother and a former X-Man, has been Polaris’ partner for a long time and is likely on the team because of her. He generates and controls blasts of superheated plasma, putting him among the most powerful mutants ever when it comes to offense. That plasma has frequently been likened to the substance of the sun, which could make him unusually well equipped to kill vampires.
Magneto can’t be seen with Cyclops
Scott Summers isn’t part of the House of X. He never signed the compact. Instead he spends his days rescuing innocents from vampires and Empyres, cutting down old enemies and former friends with little hesitation.
He remains an important ally all the same. The issue suggests Magneto slips him information that helps him save a group of human rebels from an Empyre attack led by an undead Gambit. During that fight it comes out that several Empyres are after a bounty on Cyclops’ head, which is why Magneto won’t openly side with the mutant known as “the last X-Man.”
The comic sets the two men firmly apart. Magneto’s House of X stays on defense, focused on keeping the remaining mutants alive. Scott’s X-Men, which is just him in the first issue at least, goes on the offensive and hunts the undead.
Most of the franchise’s best-known heroes are now his targets, and the man who was once the X-Men’s worst enemy is quietly slipping him their addresses.
Midnight: X-Men #1 is out now from Marvel Comics.