Morbius the living Vampire from the pages of Marvel Comics has been in the news recently. With Sony Pictures still having some of the Marvel characters licensed from the Spider-Man universe of characters, surprisingly, one character they have chosen to make a movie about is Morbius the Living Vampire.
Morbius has been around since 1971 but he probably isn’t one of the first names you might think of when picking new properties to base major motion pictures on. Still, while Morbius might not have been on the front of most people’s minds when thinking about a movie character, he is still a very interesting choice and one that might work out very well. There is a lot of upward potential with Morbius as the horror side of the Marvel Universe is largely unexplored.
Morbius the Living Vampire is actually Dr. Michael Morbius and was created by writer Roy Thomas along with penciler Gil Kane. Morbius first appeared in pages of The Amazing Spider-Man #101 (cover date October 1971) originally as a foe to Spider-Man and battling both Spider-Man and The Lizard in the initial story arch.
The first time we encounter Morbius he is on a ship headed to the United States from somewhere unknown. The crew of the ship believe he has killed their Captain (he probably did) and they attempt to seize him and cast him overboard but the powerful Morbius defeats them and lands in the U.S. and takes refuge in the same house that a recently mutated Spider-Man is hiding out in an effort to cure himself from having grown four extra arms.
Dr. Curt Conners (AKA: The Lizard) enters the story because Spider-Man has sought him out to help him undo his recent mutation. A struggle ensues when Morbius attempts to feed on Spider-Man’s blood and Dr. Conners transforms into The Lizard and Amazing Spider-Man issue 101 ends with all three squared off in combat.
The following issue continues with Morbius, Spider-Man, and The Lizard all in combat. Ultimately, Morbius bites The Lizard causing a partial transformation back into Dr. Connors then he flees the battle.
Spider-Man and Dr. Connor’s then realize there is an enzyme emitted by Morbius that can cure both of them and they set out to obtain blood from him, turning the tables on the vampire. In this issue we get more back story on Morbius, discovering not that he was turned into a pseudo-Vampire by another vampire but rather from an experiment with a vampire bat.
Eventually, Spider-Man and The Lizard are able to obtain blood from Morbius during another battle and transform The Lizard back into Dr. Connors and reverse the mutation to Spider-Man causing his extra four arms to disappear.
The next time we meet Morbius is in the pages of Marvel Team-Up issue 3 featuring Spider-Man and the Human Torch. The story very basic with Morbius still feeding on innocents and with Spider-Man still getting in the way. This time, however, Spider-Man gets help from Fantastic Four member, the Human Torch.
We do get a little more back story on the man behind the Vampire, Dr. Michael Morbius, in this issue. However, at this point, Morbius remains fairly unimpressive but his character will slowly develop and be associated with Spider-Man frequently.
Morbius soon gets the feature in Adventure Into Fear where he essentially becomes a stand-in for Dracula who has become very popular within the pages of his own Tomb of Dracula series. In fact, the cover even misleadingly has “Dracula” in a noticeable place on the cover of Adventure Into Fear issue 20 only the blurb actually says, “In the tradition of DRACULA.” A tad misleading as Dracula is nowhere to be found in the issue.
We get more backstory on Morbius and it is made clear that Dr. Michael Morbius is not a true vampire but, rather, has obtained vampire-like powers and a blood-lust after a failed experiment involving vampire bats. Morbius even briefly leaves the Spider-Man corner of Marvel for a brief and rather inconsequential run-in with the X-Men.
But Morbius morphed from vampiric villain to sympathetic hero and, over the coming years, appeared fairly frequently in the Spider-Man family of comic books and even had his own series. A Morbius The Living Vampire Omnibus is scheduled for release in 2020 and is available for pre-order now. Jared Leto has been cast to play Morbius in the upcoming Sony movie which the trailer seems to indicate will tie into the Spider-Man universe of Sony movies.
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