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To get a better idea of what makes the Midnight Sons work as a superhero team, even with their bizarre line-up, we need to look at the group’s origins and the comics and how they’ve manifested already in the MCU. To start, the team first appeared in the early 1990s during the Ghost Rider, Morbius, Nightstalkers crossover event dubbed “Rise of the Midnight Sons.” In this preliminary meeting of supernatural worlds, the likes of Danny Ketch, Michael Morbius, Blade, Hannibal King, Frank Drake, and the Darkhold Redeemers joined forces to fight against the supernatural queen Lillith. Returning to the physical plane with her “children” known as the Lillin, the supernatural team assembled to fight the forces of darkness.
Ironically, this preliminary line-up became one of the hottest-selling superhero groups for Marvel in the ’90s, often managing to even surpass the X-Men in the overall sales department. While the designs of these characters were all visually interesting, the internal and external drama that they faced was worth reading. While teams like the Avengers and the Fantastic Four worked well with one another, the Midnight Sons most certainly did not. The Nightstalkers (which consisted of Hannibal King, Frank Drake, and Blade) had a mission to eliminate all supernatural beings from the face of the Earth, including their teammates within the Sons. This made for the interesting dynamic of heroes like Ghost Rider and Morbius routinely needing to watch their backs in a fight from their own allies. While popular in its original form, the Midnight Sons would go on to create many new interpretations as years passed and new heroes joined.
