Comics Explained: Morbius, the Living Vampire

Recently, the movie trailer for Morbius has been released, so we'll be seeing the live-action debut of Morbius the Living Vampire. One of Spider-Man's foes, and an anti-hero as well, he has been an interesting character in the Marvel Universe. Although vampires do exist in the Marvel Universe, Blade being the most famous of Marvel's vampire, Morbius isn't really a vampire - that's why he's the 'Living Vampire'. 

Creation

Morbius debuted in the early-1970s when the now infamous Comics Code Authority started amending their draconian rules; fearing that the big publishers would abandon the Code, something which happened anyway, they started reforming some of their rules. One of the rules they amended was lifting the ban on featuring the walking dead, vampires, ghouls, zombies, and werewolves. Marvel decided to jump straight into the supernatural genre - after all, Stan Lee had worked on the supernatural comics of the 1940s and 1950s which were killed off by the Code. As Lee was working on a movie screenplay, and Spider-Man creator Steve Ditko had moved on by the 1970s, the task of creating a vampire antagonist for Spider-Man fell to one of Marvel's biggest writers - Roy Thomas. Years later, Thomas would be quoted as saying 'We were talking about doing Dracula, but Stan wanted a costumed villain. Other than that, he didn't specify what we should do'. Teaming up with artist Gil Kane they ended up creating Morbius the Living Vampire. Thomas was inspired by a movie he had watched years ago, and Kane modelled their living vampire off of actor Jack Palance. As a result, Morbius made his debut in The Amazing Spider-Man #101 in 1971 becoming one of the earliest vampiric characters in comics for decades.

Origins

Morbius debuted in The Amazing Spider-Man #101, but his origin was explained in the next issue through flashbacks. Dr. Michael Morbius was a Greek scientist specialising in biochemistry; he was such an expert in his field that he even won the Nobel Prize. However, he began developing a blood disorder which was slowly wasting him away. Not wanting to slowly die he began trying to find a cure, and he relied on a mixture of vampire bat DNA and electroshock therapy - if you notice a similarity between Batman's Man-Bat it is no coincidence. DC similarly wanted to take advantage of the Code's reforms, so also introduced their vampire-like villain in the comics of one of their most popular characters. Just like DC's Kirk Langstrom, Morbius's experiments went wrong and made his situation worse. Although he no longer suffered from his debilitating disease, his body underwent changes. He gained the ability to 'psionic glide', rapid health regeneration, super-speed, super-agility, and super-strength. However, at the same time, he became reliant on drinking fresh blood to survive, became injured by sunlight, became pale, grew sharp canines, and his nose flattened to resemble of bat's. Unlike actual vampires, he was a 'living vampire'. Morbius was still alive and lacked some of their weaknesses - he is unaffected by garlic, religious icons, and he cannot be killed by sunlight. When he does bite someone, and doesn't kill them, he too can create other living vampires - he can control these new vampires and he is far stronger than they are.

Now to his debut - in typical Spider-Man and Marvel fashion it is over-the-top. In The Amazing Spider-Man #100 Spider-Man grew four extra arms - finally he was a 'Spider-Man' having eight limbs. Wanting to reverse this he tried to find the Lizard - a scientist who, just like Morbius, tried to use animal DNA to help his body, but ended up turning him into an anthropomorphic lizard. Morbius moved to New York hoping that it could offer a place for him to research a cure for his condition. However, in his blood thirst, he slaughtered the crew of the ship which brought him to New York - just like Dracula slaughtering the crew which brought him to Britain. Unlike Dracula, with his blood thirst cured he is guilt-ridden, so tries, and fails, to kill himself. Secluding himself in what he thinks is an abandoned building, it is actually where Spider-Man and Curt Connors (the human form of the Lizard) are working on the cure for their conditions. When it fails, a frustrated Spider-Man smashes their test tubes waking up Morbius. Powered by blood-lust he attacked and almost killed Spider-Man unlike Connors, now transformed into Lizard, stopped him. During the battle Morbius bites Lizard partially transforming him back to Connors. Realising that Morbius holds the cure the duo track him across New York, and eventually extract his blood curing him - Spider-Man permanently, Connors wasn't as lucky.

Other Appearances

Since his debut Morbius has periodically appeared in a wide range of comics - sometimes as a villain and sometimes as an anti-hero. In Marvel Team-Up #3 his fiance Martine Bancroft tracked Morbius to the United States. One of the reasons why he travelled across continents was through the fear that he could lose control and kill Martine. She was adament that she could help Morbius, in fact she would be one of the regular occurring characters associated with Morbius. Naturally, she knew the smartest people around could help the vampire, so she tracked down the Fantastic Four. Together the Human Torch and Spider-Man tried to capture Morbius, but he was too strong and managed to flee. In 1973, to get around the Comics Code Authority Marvel started publishing magazines with maturer content and one of these was Vampire Tales. Among the stories to find its way into the 11-issues were those including Blade, and an adaptation of one of the earliest vampire novels - The Vampyr. Morbius was featured in most of the issues, and this would pave the way for his regular appearance in Marvel's Adventure into Fear which began publishing in 1974. He would periodically appear until 1992 when he gained his own title which lasted for 32 issues. This was to tie into the Midnight Sons. Dr Strange regularly formed temporary teams to act as hit squads into the wider Multiverse - when a supernatural threat appeared he could send them to swiftly deal with it. The same year Morbius debuted, one of Strange's teams also debuted - The Defenders. The Midnight Sons were formed to stop demonic and supernatural threats seemingly by the Ghost Riders Johnny Blaze and Danny Ketch in Ghost Rider Vol.3 #28, but behind the scenes it was due to Dr Strange. Morbius fought alongside the Ghost Riders, Damien Hellstorm the Son of Satan, sorceress Jennifer Hale, and Werewolf-by-Night. Among their foes have included the Mother of Demons Lilith and zombies from the Marvel Zombies universe. Of course, Morbius has had run-ins with Blade - during Civil War he even registered with the government in an effort to get Blade to.

Morbius has had a sporadic history, and often with other bigger characters - most notably Blade or the Midnight Sons - so that's where we will leave it for today. I hope you found it interesting, and for future blog updates please see our Facebook or catch me on Twitter @LewisTwiby.