Who is Morbius?

If I must drink blood, let it be the blood of the corrupt– of those who deserve to die. The blood of the guilty.

Check out that the cover comes in a bag. That means they don’t want you to open it, because it’s a collectors item if it stays in the bag. You can tell it’s a collectors item, because it says so on the cover. But only if it stays in the bag.

Here’s a thought question for the audience. If I make a comic and think it’s good and worth reading, how much effort would I go to to convince you not to read it after buying it? Reflect on that.

So we’ve got this idea now for Reading Topical Comics. While topical, they may not always be timely. We just talked about last night’s Dr. Strange movie. Now let’s talk about last month’s big Marvel hit, Morbius.

By “talk about it”, I mean let’s read a single Morbius comic and hope that tells us enough about the character to appreciate the movie.

The premise of Morbius is that he’s a science fiction vampire, so he has the powers of a vampire and the bloodlust, but his powers are rooted in superhero science, not fantasy. And he’s not undead; he’s a living vampire. Morbius was introduced as a villain/antihero in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man. Which is why Sony has the rights to make a movie out of him. Morbius was able to help Spider-Man with a limb-based condition.

And Sony seems to be planning to make a movie out of every side character from the pages of Spider-Man comics they can find. As a huge fan of Spider-Man comics, I am all for this.

I’d prefer they be good.

And this movie was almost good. Solid enough premise, started off well. Lots of potential. Hampered by sloppy editing, a weak ending, and then cringeworthy post-credits scenes showing Sony has learned nothing from its sloppy attempts at universe-building 8 years ago.

Morbius was given his own solo ongoing series in 1974, which I considered spotlighting. But I’m already reading through the Marvel Universe in order and up to 1965. So I feel like we’ll get to 1974 soon enough (like within the decade). For this series, I’d rather focus on the stories I’m not getting to soon.

So let’s look to his second series from 1992, which was anyway how I first met the character in my youth.

Rise of the Midnight Sons

We see from the cover this is part 3 of the 6-part Rise of the Midnight Sons story. I’m hoping we can avoid worrying about the larger story too much, as it’s pretty tangential. The crossover was used to launch a new line of horror-themed superhero books in the wake of the success of the new Ghost Rider series. So the story crosses across issues of Ghost Rider as well as the premiere issues of 4 new series.

I don’t have much I care to say about the creative team, so let’s just dive into the comic.

We meet Morbius, see a desperate monster of a man, his humanity faded.

We see him murder a woman and drink her blood. Satiated, the animal within fades and the humanity reemerges, remorseful at his actions.

There’s a series of interludes related to the larger story. If we pretend we don’t see them, we can ignore the larger story here and focus on Morbius’ story in this issue.

All we need to know of the larger story is that Ghost Rider is seeking allies based on some vision or something. The current Ghost Rider is Danny Ketch. He rides with Johnny Blaze, who was once Ghost Rider when the demon Zarathos had possessed him. He thought this new Ghost Rider indicated Zarathos had possessed somebody new, but learned this entity was something else entirely.

They visit Martine Bancroft, Morbius’ girlfriend from the 1970s series, who features prominently in the film.

She’s reached a point where she is hoping to cure Morbius or kill him if she can’t. But to do that, she’s allied with a scientist with his own agenda, who plans to murder Morbius under the pretense of trying to cure him.

We get a brief recap of Morbius’ history up to this point, how his attempts to cure his rare blood disease led to his current condition, how he almost killed Martine and left her for her safety, to his recent adventures.

The serum which is supposed to kill Morbius backfires, transforming him yet again into something new. (Why did it backfire? Well, plans of Lilith, but I’d like to skip all that. It backfired, okay.)

Morbius now changes between his human self and his vampire self, but the condition is unstable. He seeks an old friend for help, who affirms he is a good man.

He then gets a new look, updated for the 90s.

When Martine learns of Langford’s treachery, he murders her.

Morbius is unable to resist her blood as she dies.

That’s the end of Martine Bancroft. Or is it? This isn’t a company where characters are known to stay dead. And her boyfriend is a vampire…

Morbius decides on revenge and then considers suicide. The movie played with this idea that he would try to end his life, then seemed to forget about that thread without resolution.

The comic comes to a resolution. He feels remorse at the innocents he had murdered, but found none in killing bad people. He finds new purpose in this. I assumed the movie would go in this direction, but it went in no particular direction.

Ghost Rider subjects Morbius to his penance stare, which reveals the soul and sins of those he gazes at. But Morbius has come to terms with his own sins. Ghost Rider is on a demonic quest to destroy evil. Morbius isn’t evil, but has committed evil acts. This is a quandary for Ghost Rider’s quest. He spares Morbius, for now.

The final scene brings in Spider-Man. There was a rule in the 90s that every new series must feature Spider-man within the first half dozen issues. This is a tease for Spider-Man showing up next issue, where his again brief appearance will tease Spider-Man actually showing up in the third issue.

The Rise of the Midnight Sons arc will continue in Darkhold: Pages from the Book of Sin #1.

Of course, the Darkhold is a book that will be quite familiar to us after the Doctor Strange movie as well. We first saw it in the possession of Agatha Harkness in Wandavision.