Midnighter is a superhero appearing in American comic books first published by WildStorm and later DC Comics once it absorbed the former. The character was created by writer Warren Ellis and artist Bryan Hitch. The character made his first appearance in Stormwatch (vol. 2) #4, titled "A Finer World (Part 1 of 3)" (February 1998). He went on to appear in various Authority books and other series, as well as his own eponymous ongoing series.
Midnighter is best known as a member of the rogue superhero team the Authority. He and his husband, Apollo, have also been interpreted as a parallel of the Batman/Superman World's Finest partnership.
In an interview for Comic Values Annual (1999), edited by Alex G. Malloy, Warren Ellis described Midnighter as "The Shadow by way of John Woo". Midnighter is rarely seen without his costume and mask.One instance was in his first appearance, in Stormwatch (vol. 2) #4. Recurring themes in Midnighter's adventures are his love of violence and killing, as well as comments on his sexuality.
In 2011, DC chose to integrate the characters from the Wildstorm Universe with its mainstream DC Universe setting. Since then, Midnighter has appeared in a solo series, plus the team-up books Midnighter and Apollo, The Authority, and Superman and the Authority. The character has also been featured as part of the supporting cast for the superhero Nightwing, Batman's protégé Dick Grayson, with whom he becomes good friends. Although until 2021 Midnighter and Batman had never met on-panel, the character has become increasingly integrated with the wider Batman supporting cast.
Publication history and fictional character biography Stormwatch Warren Ellis created and introduced the character in 1998 in Stormwatch vol. 2 #4, soon after his appointment as writer on the title. The issue introduces Midnighter and Apollo as former Stormwatch agents from a secret black ops team known only to the first Weatherman, Henry Bendix. In the first issue of the arc, collected in trade paperback as A Finer World, Christine Trelane had cracked the files of the recently deposed Bendix and discovered Apollo and Midnighter's existence. The new Weatherman, Jackson King, intercepts them on a mission to seize weapons made in the "Nevada Garden", a bioengineering facility created by the first Engineer. Flashback sequences show Midnighter and Apollo, the sole survivors of their seven-member team's sinister first mission, escaping Bendix and going rogue to spend five years fighting crime on the streets of the US. Midnighter and Apollo initially resist their capture, believing Stormwatch still to be under Bendix's command. On learning of his death, they end their opposition and accept a mission from King to destroy the Nevada Garden. To repay their assistance, Trelane grants Midnighter and Apollo new civilian identities and lives away from Stormwatch. This story arc introduces Midnighter's trademark enhancements, his superpowered healing and ability to anticipate an opponent's moves so quickly as to win any fight, as being the product of bioengineering commissioned by Bendix.
The Authority
In 1999 Warren Ellis concluded his run on Stormwatch with the Final Orbit storyline, which saw the team destroyed. Midnighter was one of several Stormwatch characters Ellis retained for his new Wildstorm title, The Authority. In it, Midnighter (along with Apollo) was recruited by Jenny Sparks for a new team, the Authority, under her leadership. The new series picked up themes Ellis had explored in Stormwatch, including the political potential of a team more powerful than world governments and the United Nations.
A formidable fighter with a sardonic attitude, Midnighter epitomised the new team's commitment to fighting for a finer world, including against vested interests and world governments. Midnighter and Apollo's relationship, though hinted in previous issues, was revealed in The Authority #8. Midnighter was the architect of the team's first significant victory, the defeat of autocratic dictator Kaizen Gamorra, which he achieved by dropping the 50-mile-long Carrier onto Gamorra's island base.
During the Transfer of Power storyline, Midnighter was the only Authority member to evade capture when the U.S. government had the team attacked and replaced with manipulable substitutes. Presumed dead, Midnighter had in fact escaped the Carrier with baby Jenny Quantum. He returned to overthrow the puppet team and rescue Apollo from imprisonment and abuse at the hands of their replacements. Shortly thereafter Midnighter and Apollo were married and adopted Jenny.
Midnighter had a central role in Ed Brubaker and Dustin Nguyen's Revolution maxiseries. A visitation, apparently from a future Apollo, convinced Midnighter that he was on the path to becoming a malign dictator. To avoid this fate, Midnighter quit the team, precipitating its break-up, and returned to life fighting solo on the streets. Raised alone by Apollo, Jenny exploited her powers to age herself to young adulthood and reformed the Authority. Having convinced Midnighter to rejoin the team, Jenny discovered he was being manipulated by a dimension-hopping Henry Bendix, hitherto assumed dead. Midnighter fought for Bendix before the Engineer was able to break the mind-control; Midnighter then killed Bendix by ripping out his spine.
Kev Midnighter featured in the first three of Garth Ennis's Kev miniseries, featuring Kev Hawkins, a former SAS soldier. Kev was introduced in the semi-parody The Authority: Kev, in which he killed Midnighter, Apollo and the rest of the Authority, though the Carrier resurrected them. On their last meeting they took down MI5's Royal Oak project, an attempt to replicate Bendix's experiments. Kev later featured without the Authority in the final book of his series, A Man Called Kev.
Midnighter, Grifter and Midnighter, and World's End (2006-2011)
On 1 November 2006, an ongoing Midnighter solo series began, with an initial creative partnership of Garth Ennis and Chris Sprouse. The book was part of the 2006 "Worldstorm" soft reboot of the Wildstorm universe, which saw several books relaunched, but which faltered when flagship titles The Authority and WildC.A.T.S. suffered serious delays and were cancelled after two and one issues respectively. The series was originally intended as a six-issue miniseries but ran for 20 issues and was cancelled in June 2008.
Midnighter idea came when Ennis was having a lunch with other WildStorm people. Beside his A Man Called Kev and Battler Britton vanity projects, Wildstorm editor Scott Dunbier asked Ennis to also do something a bit more commercial in return, so the writer suggested to "go straight for the jugular and give the best character they’ve got his own book", which in his opinion would be Midnighter. Ennis described the character as "utterly lethal and he tells it like it is. He's got a nice dark sense of humor, too". About Midnighter's sexuality, the writer stated that "his sexuality is not a complex issue: he likes screwing men. He likes screwing one man in particular – but that doesn't mean he wants to be around the guy 24/7, hence the solo book". At Midnighter presentation, Ennis said that he could do more than six issues, something that didn't happen, and would try to maintain it as a solo book, without "any major appearances by The Authority in general" ("superteam, yawn"), "Apollo in particular" ("boring blond twat") or crossovers ("They can get someone else in for that").
Keith Giffen became the ongoing writer for Midnighter'''s last ten issues after a request from Dunbier, since Giffen previously expressed desire to write The Authority. According to Giffen, the idea was to keep Midnighter's consistency in characterization while adding his own different feel to it. He said Midnighter was an interesting character to him because he "never quite understood his power": "The idea of somebody who faces you down, and two seconds after meeting you, knows how to defeat you? That's kind of intriguing. Just playing around with that will be interesting". The writer expressed similar feelings to Ennis about keeping Midnighter on his own and "pull him back from The Authority", saying that he didn't want "that kind of feel that Midnighter is an extension of The Authority book". Giffen also added that he wished "to keep [writing Midnighter] until they throw me off the book".
The first story arc saw Midnighter attacked and kidnapped by agents of a man named Paulus while passing through the Carrier's teleportation portal. Paulus told Midnighter that he had replaced Midnighter's secondary heart with a remote-detonated bomb, and challenged him on pain of death to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Time-travelling back to the First World War trenches, Midnighter encountered Hitler as a young corporal in the German army, but was apprehended by 'time police' officers from the 95th century before carrying out his mission. In his struggle to escape, he crashed the officers' time machine at the year 1945, shortly before Hitler's expected suicide. Eventually Midnighter allied himself with the police and returned to his own time, where he threatened to erase Paulus from history by killing his kidnapped younger self; he secured Paulus's surrender without having to kill the child. Midnighter then returned to the Carrier, but was apparently just as listless as before, immediately sending himself on another mission in Iraq.
This first arc was followed by four single-issue stories. Midnighter #6 featured an apparent alternate-universe Samurai Midnighter. Midnighter #7, by Brian K. Vaughan and Darick Robertson, explored the way Midnighter's brain processes combat by running the story backwards. Midnighter #8, by Christos Gage and John Paul Leon, dealt with Midnighter's attempts to connect better with humans after a graphic and public battle with the Suicide King.
A second story arc (issues #10–16), under new creative team Keith Giffen and Jon Landry (with ChrisCross pencilling later issues), detailed Midnighter's attempts to rediscover his life before becoming superhuman. Files given to him by Jenny Quantum identified him as Lucas Trent, born 14 July 1967 (making him 40 years old in 2007), a native of Harmony, Indiana. On visiting the town he found it was the hub of a paramilitary patriotic organisation named Anthem, with ambitions to take over the United States and provide the country with the conscience they felt it had lost. While battling Anthem and its superpowered operatives, including Dawn (a reference to the phrase "dawn's early light" in "The Star-Spangled Banner"), and Rosie (patterned after Rosie the Riveter), he discovered that Jenny had falsified the documents she gave him, and that he had never been Trent – but decided to stay on in Harmony nonetheless.
The final Midnighter storyline, again by Giffen, featured a Midnighter imposter attacking the Carrier and the Authority, and Midnighter's, fight to defeat him.
The 2007 mini-series, Grifter & Midnighter, united Grifter, of WildC.A.T.s, with Midnighter. The series was written by Chuck Dixon, with art by Ryan Benjamin and inking by Saleem Crawford.
The 2008 Number of the Beast Wildstorm limited series described the devastation of Earth, and set the scene for a new Authority ongoing series, by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, part of the World's End storyline. In this series Midnighter appears as one of the last Authority members still able to act in the ruins of London, now called Unlondon. Separated from Apollo, who is confined to the upper atmosphere by sunlight-blocking fog over the planet's surface, Midnighter helps civilians to reach the ruins of the Carrier, now a stronghold for survivors. Midnighter is able to contact Apollo via balloons which he releases high up in the atmosphere.