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COMICS· Marvel ComicsJul 19, 2026

Marvel Reinvents Cyclops as a Bearded Monster Hunter for Its Horror-Tinged Midnight X-Men

Midnight: X-Men #1 debuts a weathered, shaved-head Scott Summers battling vampires in Jonathan Hickman's new horror continuity.

By Comics Today
3 min readCT-WIRE-CYCLOPS
Midnight: X-Men
Midnight: X-Men

Cyclops is trading his clean-cut leader look for something far grimmer: a shaved head, a heavy beard, and a war against vampires.

The new design surfaces in Midnight: X-Men #1, arriving October 7, 2026, as part of Marvel's horror-flavored Midnight continuity from writer Jonathan Hickman and artist Matteo Della Fonte.

In this reality, Scott Summers is reimagined as a weathered monster hunter, one of the unturned mutants standing between innocent lives and a world overrun by vampires and mutant empires.

The look leans hard into the tone. Gone is the buttoned-up field commander; in his place is a battle-scarred survivor who reads more like a horror-movie lead than a super-team leader.

A wave of variant covers by artists including Ryan Stegman, Clayton Crain, Bjorn Barends and Dike Ruan has been showing off the redesign ahead of release.

It is the latest sign of how far Marvel is willing to bend its icons for the Midnight line, using genre to make even a character as familiar as Cyclops feel newly dangerous.

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