My Rating
“Smoke And Mirrors”
Fighting their way through the Realm of Vapors, the Midnight Suns finally reach the throne of Valtorr—only to discover that the dreaded demon lord is already dead! His enormous corpse rots upon the throne, murdered by his own general, Korrosion. If Valtorr is dead, then who exactly is leading his demonic army toward Earth? Wolverine, Magik, Blade, Nico Minoru, and Spirit Rider may have arrived too late to stop an invasion that was never truly Valtorr’s to begin with.
New Orleans—Earth. Inside the Laveau family crypt, Agatha Harkness and Zoe Laveau watch as Korrosion emerges through the Black Mirror. Yet the demon general’s arrival isn’t the biggest surprise waiting for them. Korrosion reveals her true identity as Corina, the long-lost member of Agatha’s ancient coven! After centuries of enslavement, Corina explains how she secretly studied her captor’s magic and eventually became powerful enough to destroy him. The arrogant Valtorr never saw it coming. Unfortunately for Earth, killing a demon lord wasn’t the end of Corina’s plan.
With Korrosion’s ritual underway, the Midnight Suns desperately search for a way home. Will they make it back to Earth-616 in time to stop Corina? Can Wolverine survive the Realm of Vapors without his protective armor? More importantly, just how much does all this magic piss Logan off anyway? Collect the series to find out!
Review
And there we have it—the final issue of Marvel Comics’ 2022 Midnight Suns miniseries. To get the most out of this story, I recommend collecting all five issues first—or grabbing the trade paperback—and reading the entire adventure in one sitting. As someone who wasn’t deeply invested in this particular storyline before starting the series, I sometimes struggled to remember the smaller details from one issue to the next. Reading everything back-to-back would probably make the pacing and larger mystery work much better.
Being primarily a collector of Silver and Bronze Age comic books, I’m also not as knowledgeable about some of Marvel’s newer supernatural characters as I would like to be. Zoe Laveau, Spirit Rider, and Nico Minoru were largely unfamiliar territory for me when I started this adventure. Magik, Blade, Wolverine, Agatha Harkness, and Doctor Doom gave me plenty of familiar faces to grab onto while the series introduced me to the younger generation. That’s actually one of the things I enjoyed about Midnight Suns. I came into the series for the old guard and walked away knowing a little more about Marvel’s modern supernatural universe.
Does playing the Midnight Suns video game help fill in some of those gaps? Maybe, although I can’t say for certain. What I can say is that Ethan Sacks delivers a satisfying conclusion after the slower pacing of issue four. The Corina/Korrosion revelation ties the ancient history of Agatha’s coven into the present-day threat and finally brings the story full circle.
I’m giving Midnight Suns #5 four out of five stars. The complete five-issue series also earns four out of five stars from me. It wasn’t perfect, and a couple of chapters could have moved considerably faster, but I enjoyed my trip through Marvel’s darker supernatural corners.
On to the next adventure for me…