Creature Feature



Morbius: The Living Vampire



By AL J. Vermette


As the full moon hovers over New York City, a lone dark figure can be seen lurking in the shadows. As a young couple stroll down the sidewalk enjoying each other and the warming summer night, the figure zeroes in on them as his next prey. Just as the shadow is ready to pounce upon them, another lone figure catches sight of what is about to go down and intercepts the attack. The young couple flees as Spider-Man and his vampiric enemy battle over the streets below. The demon can fly but Spider-Man keeps up with his web-shooters until he corners the evil creature and subdues the vampire creature.


Spiderman knows who this once brilliant scientist was, a man named Michael Morbius, who through an experiment gone wrong turned himself into a vampire creature of subhuman evil. It will take all of the superhero’s skills to stop this rival, but stop him he will and in the end Spiderman brings Morbius to justice.


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Morbius: The Living Vampire made his debut in the pages of Marvel Comics in October of 1971. Created by writer Roy Thomas and artist Gil Kane, the character was to be added as another member of Spiderman’s Rogues Gallery of super foes. Among greats like Doctor Octopus, The Lizard, Mysterio, and The Green Goblin, the living vampire Morbius was to add a little more fright to the wall crawler’s cluster of bad guys. His first appearance was in The Amazing Spider-Man issue 101 and was a hit among fans. In later comics, Morbius would face off with Blade after his creation in 1973 as well. He was one of the first original comic book vampires just behind Vampirella in 1969 although they do share a plunging neckline together.


Morbius is considered a living vampire as opposed to a creature that has died and risen from the dead as a blood-seeking creature of the night. In the case of Doctor Michael Morbius, his vampiric nature came from an experiment he was working on to cure a rare blood disease he was born with. Working with vampire bats, he thought he could use their digestion of the blood to alter his illness, but turned himself into something of a monster instead. His powers are much like the classic vampire of enhanced strength and speed along with the supremacy to fly. His affliction stems from science and not the supernatural like traditional vampires, so he is not affected by crosses, holy water, or other such religious attributes. Although sunlight may cause him pain due to his chalk-like pale skin, it will not kill him as in the case of most vampire lore. He is also characterized by his vampire fangs, blood-red eyes that sink deep into his skull, and his long-clawed fingernails.




As said, Morbius can fly while in human form and don’t need to turn into a bat or other creature to do so. In fact, he can’t change into any other creature, not even (in the comics) back into his human form. This was something that changed for the 2022 movie featuring the Living Vampire. His mastery of flight was also explored in the 2022 film where we see the creature take flight and fly on the wind currents over the city of New York as well as flying ahead of a subway train.


In his comic book incarnation, Morbius is the creature responsible for creating what would become his greatest adversary Blade: The Vampire Hunter. When Blade was introduced in 1973 by writer Marv Wolfman, he used the storyline that it was Morbius that attacked Blade’s mother when she was carrying her yet unborn son. It was his bite that made her give birth to Blade, a half-human half-vampire creature that would go on to become known as The Day Walker. A half-vampire or Dhampir, Blade would grow up to hunt, kill and destroy all vampires in his never-ending quest to rid the world of the blood-sucking creatures.


The name of Doctor Morbius although at first thought one would think was lifted from the 1956 sci-fi movie Forbidden Planet, but the character's creators say that just was not the case. However….his direct look did come from Hollywood actor Jack Palance who in turn two years later, would go on to play the vampire Count Dracula in a 1973 TV-made movie production.




Although Morbius started out as a super foe for Spider-Man to deal with, he would go on to star in other comic book storylines as well as getting his own title and starring in a book series called Vampire Tales from 1973 to 1975. In 1995, Morbius was cast in a book series called Rise of The Midnight Sons where he worked with Ghost Rider as a member of his superhero group, The Midnight Sons. Over the years, Morbius would go on to guest star in a number of comic books as well as return to the series that he was created for Spider-Man. Over the years, his character has changed from being only written as the antagonist or the bad guy of the week to more of a hero type. After all, the man…..the doctor he once was…was indeed a good man, it was only his vampire side and nature that drove him to the dark side. In a 1993 publication called Maximum Carnage, Morbius even teams up with non-other than Spider-Man and other heroes to stop Carnage, the evil offspring of Venom.




Morbius has also appeared in other media such as on TV with Spider-Man: The Animated Series where due to it being a kid’s show, didn’t bite necks to gain his blood fix. Here he used little suckers on the palms of his hands to take blood plasma from people leaving them with welts over their bodies but very much alive. Morbius was going to have a small walk-on cameo at the end of the 1998 action-thriller Blade, but the scene was sadly cut. A live-action Morbius movie has been in the works as far back as 2000, but that would lay under red tape until Morbius The Movie would be released.





Following in the direct footsteps of the two Venom movies, Sony Pictures released the live-action Morbius movie with actor Jared Leto in the starting title role. Like in the Venom solo film, this take on the Living Vampire has no Spider-Man in the movie although both creations would have never excited without him….although Spidey is referenced more than once all throughout the movie. Unlike in the comics, Doctor Michael Morbius can revert back to his human form and can seamlessly switch back and forth at will, especially after feeding on fresh human blood. The Morbius movie retained much of the character's core elements, although actor Jared Leto does not don the skin-tight spandex leotard that we see in the comics……thank God!


For me as a kid, I had a comic book that featured Spider-Man doing battle with both Morbius and Man-Wolf that I just loved from the good old 70’s. I never knew what happened to that book as it just seemed to vanish over the years, but I did have it well into my adulthood.


Today Morbius The Living vampire is as loved now as he was back in his creation year of 1971. He is scary and cool, sometimes a hero and sometimes not so much, but he’s a cool character just the same either way. As I’m writing this issue’s Creature Feature, I’m looking up that old comic I had so long ago, man I have to get another copy somehow. Okay here’s one for ya…..Morbius vs Vampirella…..battle of the low cut cleavage.

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