[2] 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".

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.

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 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.

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.

Having convinced Midnighter to rejoin the team, Jenny discovered he was being manipulated by a dimension-hopping Henry Bendix, hitherto assumed dead.

On 1 November 2006, an ongoing Midnighter solo series began, with an initial creative partnership of Garth Ennis and Chris Sprouse.

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.

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").

[10] The first story arc saw Midnighter attacked and kidnapped by agents of a man named Paulus while passing through the Carrier's teleportation portal.

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.

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.

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.

In the autumn of 2011, DC relaunched its production with 52 new titles, including Stormwatch (written by Paul Cornell and drawn by Miguel Sepulveda).

During the summer of 2014 he is regularly featured in the comic book series Grayson as he works to stop Spyral in collecting the body parts of a dead villain which endows those who have them the powers of the Justice League.

In it, Midnighter, having broken up with Apollo, has to come to terms with being newly single, as well as tracking down a thief who stole exotic technology from the God Garden and is openly selling it to different individuals.

Amongst the items stolen are files containing the origin of who Midnighter really was before the Gardener abducted and created him, and Lucas Trent is revealed to be a fake identity.

It re-established his over-the-top acts of graphic violence and focused on his community work with everyday people, a similar scenario to the character's early days in the WildStorm Universe before joining Stormwatch.

According to writer Orlando, he began writing Midnighter after Mark Doyle, Batman's editor, asked if he wanted to "pitch" any character.

Midnighter is also referenced in the newly renumbered Detective Comics as a Batman Family ally; it is mentioned that Nightwing reaches out to him to access Door technology.

The character is shown moving faster than both the human and superhuman eye, and in possession of a healing factor that allows him to rapidly recover from injury and illness.

Ellis portrayed the Midnighter delivering a monologue on this ability to intimidate opponents; Keith Giffen later had the character distribute a business card to this effect, to save time.

[23] Issue #7 of the Midnighter solo series, written by Brian K. Vaughan, showed the character using this ability regressively, to visualize the desired outcome of a battle and work backwards logically to achieve it.

The stand-alone Authority graphic novel Human on the Inside, by John Ridley, suggested the ability was reactive, and required an opponent to make a first move to define the possibilities for a response; however, this is contradicted by numerous earlier and later comics.

He is able to finish other people's sentences before they have thought about it, and when Stormwatch's map of alien threats to Earth materialised in front of him and Apollo, he instantly knew what it was.

Harry Tanner, reputed to be the world's greatest swordsman, struggled to land even a single blow on Midnighter since the latter could predict every move he would make.