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.
This story is from the January 2022 edition of SFX.
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This story is from the January 2022 edition of SFX.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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