When the Goddess of the Underworld herself, Lilith, Mother of Demons, terrorizes the world, there’s only one group of supernatural protectors that come to Earth’s aid: they are the Midnight Sons!
Born from an ancient order and comprised of monsters and monster hunters, this terror-inducing crew targets that which goes bump in the night, but as they battle, they draw closer to their truest natures...with horrifying results.
The Order of the Midnight Sons
Over 20,000 years ago, in the days of pre-Cataclysm Atlantis, a mysterious group of powerful beings band together as the Order of the Midnight Sons, AKA the Spirits of Vengeance, to oppose the demon Zarathos. Along with a similar group known as the Blood, they battle Zarathos and his forces, but unable to fully defeat him, the Order instead
forces the demon into the Medallion of Power, an object Zarathos seeks to control. Unfortunately, the Order becomes trapped within the Medallion, leaving the Blood to shatter the mystical talisman to prevent others from seeking it. The Blood member Caretaker takes possession of the pieces and passes them on over the centuries to the members of two bloodlines. Those recipients often seek vengeance against injustice as Ghost Riders.
In recent years, Dr. Stephen Strange, AKA Doctor Strange, gathers a loose-knit confederation of mystically powered heroes, originally called the Nine and eventually the Midnight Sons, to serve as mankind’s first line of defense against the Mother of Demons, Lilith, and her children, the Lilin.
Old Enemies and New Heroes
Once Lilith frees herself from the belly of an ancient beast known as the Leviathan, AKA Tiamat, Strange manipulates certain heroes, knowing that Lilith would ultimately seek to rip open the walls between the earthly dimension and the Shadowside, where many of her children reside.
Strange’s chosen allies, informally referred to as the Midnight Sons, include Daniel Ketch, AKA Ghost Rider; the pseudo-vampire Dr. Michael Morbius, AKA Morbius, the Living Vampire; the hellfire-shooting Johnny Blaze, then a former Ghost Rider; the Nightstalkers, a group of mystic-hunting heroes that includes Eric Brooks, AKA Blade, Frank Drake, and Hannibal King; and the Darkhold Redeemers trio Louise Hastings, Victoria Montesi, and Sam Buchanan, who are often focused on destroying the ancient tome of evil known as the Darkhold and its living embodiment, the Dwarf.
The team’s roster changes over the years, with the loss of heroes and the addition of new ones, as do the Sons’ leaders, which include Morbius and Strange’s close companion Wong, who takes the helm. When Morbius leads a new iteration of the team, the roster includes sorceress Jennifer Kale, Daimon Hellstorm, AKA Hellstorm, Son of Satan, and the lycanthropic-inclined Jack Russel, AKA Werewolf by Night and they work together to study a zombie virus from an alternate reality.
Ghost Rider (Blaze) leads the latest iteration of the supernatural squad, which includes Blade, Marc Spector, AKA Moon Knight (Mr. Knight’s personality), Elsa Bloodstone, Jericho Drumm, AKA Doctor Voodoo, Ted Sallis, AKA Man-Thing, and Danny Rand, AKA Iron Fist, Ben Reilly, AKA Scarlet Spider, and Wong.
Things That Go Bump in the Night
The Midnight Sons go up against all manner of demonic and supernatural evils, including most prominently Lilith and her Lilin, the Lilin Sister Nil, Zarathos, and Hell-Lord Mephisto. They also face demonic cartels, and sometimes their own members, such as Morbius, who becomes influenced by the powerful supernatural forces they face.
Unintentional Team-ups
Most of the heroes that help fight Lilith’s Lilin and other demonic forces from alternate dimensions don’t know about the Midnight Sons good work keeping back the main, most dangerous threats. Such heroes include Wanda Maximoff, AKA Scarlet Witch, Eric Simon Payne, AKA Devil-Slayer, and Werewolf by Night—the latter of which becomes an official member of the team. The demonic Michael Badilino, AKA Vengeance, who initially has it out for Ghost Rider, sets aside his goal to join the Sons and help them battle the darkness.
Rise of the Midnight Sons
Aware of Strange’s plans, Lilith sought to break apart the Sons before they fully came together; she dispatched the Lilin called Fang to poison Morbius, making him susceptible to her control, and also tricked the Nightstalkers into attacking Ghost Rider by utilizing her spawn Meatmarket to instigate the confrontation. This ploy ended in a stalemate between the Nightstalkers and Ghost Rider and his ally Blaze, with the supernatural hunters promising to return to their goal of destroying Ghost Rider after the more powerful threat was dealt with. The Nightstalkers continued their quest to rid the world of supernatural threats, leading to Blade using a portion of the Darkhold to summon the powers of the Demogorge, transforming him into Switchblade. The possessed vampire hunter soon targeted his former allies but was ultimately purged of the Demogorge’s influence. Meanwhile, the Darkhold Redeemers added Jinx and Modred the Mystic to their ranks, while Ghost Rider and Blaze confronted the seemingly demonic Vengeance—in actuality the other recipient of the Medallion of Power’s fragments.
Recovering from her defeat by feasting on her children’s corpses, Lilith regained her strength and called for all remaining Earthbound Lilin to return to her side. Only the bestial Outcast answered her call, tearing open Lilith’s pregnant stomach and allowing her to give birth to the Lilin anew. She and her spawn allied with Centurious, The Soulless Man and his own demonic cartel, to capture the Medallion of Power. Lilith increased her control over Morbius, as Fang’s blood flowing inside the Living Vampire’s veins took on sentience as the Lilin Bloodthirst, whose influence on Morbius increased over time. To further unbalance Morbius, the Lilin Parasite possessed and reanimated his lover, Martine Bancroft. During a battle in the catacombs beneath the Cypress Hills Cemetery, Zarathos was freed from his prison within Centurious, and Lilith abandoned her old ally for the more powerful demon. In the process of these events, many of the Lilin rampaged across the world, encountering heroes including Scarlet Witch, Devil-Slayer, and Werewolf by Night.
Though these heroes were successful in their defeats of, respectively, Lilin members Pixil, the Infinks and a congregation of “goblins,” they remained unaware of the Sons’ battle against Lilith’s main forces. During this “siege of darkness,” Vengeance was forced to put aside his quest to destroy Ghost Rider to aid the Sons, eventually learning the truth of his origins. Though the Sons fought valiantly, they were eventually cornered in Doctor Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum, where Lilith’s control over Morbius led to him murdering Louise Hastings while the Lilin Sister Nil invaded the building and killed Imei Chang, the fiancée of Doctor Strange’s valet and faithful sidekick Wong. The Sanctum was temporarily destroyed, leaving the Sons surrounded by the Lilin forces. The battle led back to the Cypress Hills Cemetery.
After Lilith and Zarathos consummated their relationship, the Midnight Sons used the Medallion of Power to turn Lilith and her spawn back, casting many of the Lilin into the Shadowside dimension; however, at that point, the Fallen—members of the Blood who had turned loyal to Zarathos—returned to Earth and their lord’s side, leaving the Sons with an even greater threat. His energies at their height, Zarathos confronted and seemingly killed Ghost Rider, leaving the Midnight Sons to battle the demon without him. Aided by the Blood, the Midnight Sons defeated the Fallen and seemingly destroyed Zarathos shortly thereafter, but Lilith escaped with her unborn child. The final incarnation of the Sons—now comprised of Blaze, Vengeance, Blade, King, Morbius, and a splinter aspect of Doctor Strange known only as Strange (though present, Drake was not allowed to partake in the pact by Strange and Caretaker as they considered him too human to be eligible)—formed a pact with Caretaker. This incarnation finally cemented their status as a unit, but slowly drifted apart after this battle, with each becoming involved in their own affairs. Some, like the Nightstalkers and the Darkhold Redeemers, suffered through deaths, resurrections, and loss of faith. Drake and King were believed dead for a time but were temporarily merged into a new version of Dracula. Montesi was revealed to be a construct of the Darkhold itself, explaining her own bizarre connection to the book.
Other members of the Midnight Sons are still active, though with little or no contact with the group’s other members. Zarathos has recently reconstituted himself within Johnny Blaze. While Lilith has plagued Doctor Strange, Jennifer Kale, Satana Hellstrom, AKA Satana, and Topaz, the child she sired with Zarathos has not been seen. Morbius expunged Bloodthirst from his system shortly after the Zarathos battle through a full-body blood transfusion and bested the Lilin. He continues to battle his vampiric thirsts while the Ketch Ghost Rider ascended to the throne of Hell and then mysteriously vanished before returning to pursue Blaze as an agent of Zadkiel. Vengeance went insane and committed suicide, trapping him in the Hell dimension Ghost Rider briefly ruled, while the Strange being was eventually re-merged with Doctor Strange. Later, Dan Ketch killed Caretaker, whose granddaughter, former nun Sister Sara, then became the new Caretaker.
After a zombie-creating virus from Earth-2149 spread to Earth-616, the organization A.R.M.O.R. authorized Morbius to form a new incarnation of the Midnight Sons to track down infected beings. The roster Morbius recruited includes the demonic, the dead, and the damned: Hellstorm, Man-Thing, Werewolf by Night, and sorceress Jennifer Kale. Among the undead that escaped were voodoo zombie Simon Garth who carried the head of the Zombie Deadpool. Morbius protected his team with a vaccine from zombie-dom, and the team tracked the zombies to an island nation Taino, where these zombies were captured by the voodoo sorcerer Black Talon. Talon attempted to sell the virus to Parker Robbins, AKA the Hood, the kingpin of Super Villains, who thought the virus could be bad for business but the lord of the Dark Dimension Dormammu, originator of the Hood’s powers, commanded the Hood to get hold of the virus. The Midnight Sons interrupted the sale. Z-Pool and Garth escaped, but not before Z-pool infected Talon’s people with the virus, causing an outbreak. Morbius tried to use his vaccine, but it mutated the plague into a strain that could kill and feed as a free-floating cloud. Russell’s human-half became infected and attacked Kale, who called for Dormammu’s help. Meanwhile, Morbius received orders from A.R.M.O.R. to nuke the island. Receiving powers from Dormammu to protect herself, Kale became possessed by Dormammu. Hellstorm helped her remove the lord of the Dark Dimension from her mind and together, they sent him back to his realm. Kale, back to normal, then helped cast a spell to create a full moon to transform Jack into back into a werewolf so that he’d stop attacking them. It turned out that Dormammu’s sorcery froze the “virus cloud” and the team forced Talon to transfer the cloud’s hive mind to volunteer zombie Simon Garth. Garth was sent to containment while Jack was cured of the virus, and apparently thanks to Garth, Z-Pool was dead in the water (literally, a floating head in the water off the island Taino).
The latest iteration of Midnight Sons was brought together by Wong after Doctor Strange unintentionally opened a gateway in Las Vegas that allowed the Hell-Lord Mephisto to pass through. Wasting no time, the collector of souls Mephisto corrupted the city’s citizens and several Avengers heroes present. Wong gathered a makeshift team of Midnight Sons and Daughters to fight Mephisto’s hellish hordes, leader Johnny Blaze, AKA Ghost Rider, the ghost Bats—Strange’s deceased dog—Blade, Doctor Voodoo, Elsa Bloodstone, Iron Fist, Man-Thing, and Mr. Knight. They fought for hours and when they thought all was lost, several of Mephisto’s influenced heroes turned on him. Wong revealed that he had put Blaze on Hell’s throne, replacing Mephisto and giving them a power boost that they needed to defeat him. Mephisto then opened the ground to visit the new lord of Hell and Wong fell into the abyss. Man-Thing extended an arm, catching him, but Wong insisted that he let him go so he could fix things. Strange refused but Wong insisted, and Man-Thing released him. Wong came to a comfortable landing thanks to Blaze and they coordinated from Hell, giving Strange the power of all the Avengers to assist him against Mephisto. Though he disappeared before Strange struck him with lightning, Blaze returned him after a hundred years in Hell’s clink with a lot of unhappy Ghost Riders. The Midnight Sons and the Avengers placed Mephisto in a magically fortified prison overlooking the Vegas strip.
