Marvel’s living vampire makes it to movie screens
A conflicted anti-hero faces a vampiric curse in “Morbius,” the Sony film based on the Marvel Comics character.
Jared Leto stars as Michael Morbius in film, released in theaters this week.
The character Morbius started out as a foe of Spider-Man — the brilliant biochemist developed vampirism after an experimental treatment for a rare blood disorder went wrong. Morbius in that way is responsible for his own affliction.
Leto explained the character’s beginnings in a promotional video released online.
“Morbius appeared first as an antagonist in ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ in 1971, and eventually evolved into more of an anti-hero,” Leto said.
Morbius, first introduced in “Amazing Spider-Man” #101, with a September 1971 cover date, was a creation of writer Roy Thomas and penciller Gil Kane.
As the Comics Code had banned vampires up until 1971, Morbius was one of the first horror characters introduced following the lifting of the ban.
“For years before that, Marvel was actually forbidden from using characters considered more on the supernatural side,” Leto said. “It was a really big deal when Morbius finally made his debut. He was part of a much darker term within Marvel; one that, fortunately, fans fully embraced. After all, one loves a good monster story. There is something about the character that stoked people’s imaginations. It really can grab a hold
of you; it certainly did with me.”
After appearing in two issues of “Amazing SpiderMan,” Morbius faced the wall-crawler again in 1972’s “Marvel Team-Up” #s 3 and 4 and 1974’s “Giant Size Super-Heroes” #1.
Then, Morbius moved over to “Vampire Tales,” a black-and-white horror magazine that skewed more mature than the main Marvel line, appearing in nine of the 11 published issues.
Concurrently with “Vampire Tales,” Morbius became the headliner of the bimonthly “Adventure into Fear” comic series, appearing in issues #20 through #31, when the series ended.
Morbius appeared sporadically in backup roles from then until the early 1990s.
The “Morbius the Living Vampire Omnibus” in 2020 contained the earlier adventures, as well as additional back-up tales and guest spots into the 1980s.
Morbius’ adventures up through 1975 were reprinted in the Epic Collection “Morbius the Living Vampire” in 2021, with his adventures through the early 1980s contained in a second Epic Collection, “The End of a Living Vampire.”
Morbius was brought back in the 1990s as part of the “Rise of the Midnight Sons” crossover. In 1992’s “Morbius” #1, the vampire became involved in a crossover with “Ghost Rider” and other popular horror characters from Marvel. Len Kaminski was the writer for the issue, which was pencilled by Ron Wagner with inks by Mike Witherby. The letterer was Janice Chiang and the colorist was Gregory A. Wright, who later took over as writer of the series, which ran for 32 issues through 1995, marking Morbius’ longestrunning comic series to date.
Morbius returned for a nine-issue stint in 2013; an eight-issue run in 2019; and a one-shot in 2021.
Meanwhile, the “Morbius” film, directed by Daniel Espinosa, is in theaters now, starring Leto alongside Matt Smith, Tyrese Gibson, Adria Arjona, and Jared Harris.