SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE

AS MARVEL’S LIVING VAMPIRE HITS THE BIG SCREEN, SFX UNCOVERS HIS ORIGINS WITH MORBIUS CREATOR ROY THOMAS

- NICK SETCHFIELD

THE MARVEL UNIVERSE mutated in the 1970s. While the previous decade belonged to the bright, quirky superheroes that had defined the company – marquee brands such as Spider-Man, the Hulk and Captain America – a new generation of icons followed, wilder and darker than the last. Barbarian heroes, cosmic adventurers and, lurching from the shadows of crypts, graves and otherworldly swamps, a sudden infestation of horror characters.

Anticipating this new midnight aesthetic was Morbius the Living Vampire, introduced in the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man in 1971. There had always been a macabre edge to the web-slinger’s foes: the Green Goblin dripped pure Halloween, right down to his trademark pumpkin bombs, while a pinch of the uncanny accompanied Mysterio, a faceless master of nightmarish illusions whose entire schtick felt like a one-man Haunted Mansion.

But the ghoulish Morbius was next level. With his “ghost white skin” and “eyes like blazing candles” he was every inch the revenant, hungering for human blood in true Hammer fashion. But there was a twist. Science, not the occult, had spawned this creature, and he was cursed as much by a conscience as his unholy appetites.

The time was right for Morbius. Stan Lee had recently tested the power of the Comics Code Authority, the watchdog set up to regulate the ethical tone of the industry. A three-part Spider-Man story had defied the Code’s long-held disapproval of drug-related storylines, arriving on newsstands without the customary CCA cover stamp. Now, more than ever, the Code seemed a fossilised killjoy, a relic of 1950s morality at odds with the post-’60s world.