By “Only two things separate me from a true vampire…religion and remorse.”
Morbius injected the superhero world with a dash of horror when he appeared in Amazing Spider-Man 101-102. Created by Roy Thomas and Gil Kane, Morbius was an anti-villain—he didn’t really want to murder anyone. His goal wasn’t to create a super-race of vampires. He wanted to find a cure for his predicament.
The origin story that Kane and Thomas presented in ASM 102 remains vivid in my mind over 30 years later. A prize-winning chemist, Michael Morbius suffered from a terminal blood disease. He sought to turn back his illness using a serum made with the blood of vampire bats. His cure worked, but it also turned him into a vampire—luckily he was wearing a blue and red suit at the time that would go nicely with his new albino skin!
As a vampire, Morbius could fly (the excuse was that his bones were hollow), drink blood, and possessed extraordinary strength. Unlike his supernatural cousins, he didn’t die when the sun came up (although he felt weaker) and he experienced a heavy amount of guilt for those he killed. Shortly after Morbius is cured, he murders his best friend Nikos.
Morbius seemed popular enough that he made a second appearance soon afterward in Marvel Team-Up #3-4. These early appearances were all drawn by Kane, who had an affinity for the character. Kane’s costume design is beautiful simplicity. MTU 4 features Spider-Man and the early X-Men (in a unique appearance without costumes) subduing Morbius long enough for Professor X to examine him.
When Morbius broke free of the X-Men, he exploded into several different venues of the Marvel Universe. He took over the lead serial in Adventures Into Fear, starting with issue 20, lasting until the series’ cancellation with #32. The stories really aren’t very good. The highlight is issue 21, with art by Gil Kane. The rest of the issues have a rotating chair of artists and writers that continually try to pit Morbius against supernatural creatures.
Morbius made a much more notable appearance in Giant-Size Superheroes #1. This title was meant to be the first in a series of oversized (64 big pages!) comics featuring Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, and so on. It turned out to be the first and only issue (as each hero got their own Giant-Size comic) but it was a doozy to a ten year old kid. Spider-Man fought Morbius and Man-Wolf in a story drawn by Kane and written by Gerry Conway.
