Morbius: 10 Facts You Don’t Know

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Michael Morbius, generally known as ‘Morbius, the Living Vampire’ is one of the oldest and earliest villain of Spiderman from the Marvel comics. Recently we saw Morbius in live action in Sony’s new trailer of the ‘Morbius’ movie. The diehard comic books fans already know who Morbius is and what are his powers and other stuffs. But for those people who don’t know a lot about Dr. Michael Morbius, I am giving a brief summary about the character below so that you don’t feel bored during the facts part of this article. If you think you know the general stuffs about Morbius then you can directly skip to the facts section of this article.

Dr. Michael Morbius is a Greek scientist and a Nobel Prize winning biochemist in the Marvel universe. Since his childhood he was suffering from a rare blood disease whose cure didn’t exist in the world at that time. Since Morbius is a biochemist, he developed an experimental treatment involving vampire bats (a species of blood sucking bats) and electroshocks and tried it on himself. But the experiment resulted in a failure and the side effects of the experiment turned him into a pseudo-Vampire, who needed to consume blood in order to survive, and he also gained the typical vampire characteristics like aversion to sunlight and powers like flight, strength, echo location and super speed. The failed experiment also changed his overall appearance resembling more like a bat. He gained fangs, his nose flattened to appear more bat-like, and his skin became extremely pale. Additionally, he also gained the power to turn any living creature into a vampire just by a bite. In the comics Morbius met Spiderman in an odd situation where Spiderman had grown additional four arms and Morbius’ vampire blood helped Spiderman to get rid of the extra arms.

So this was the brief history of Morbius from the comics. Now since you know the history of Morbius, let’s now dive into our facts section countdown where I will tell you some rarely known facts about Morbius, and do let me know in the comments that which of the facts you already knew. So let’s begin.

10) Morbius and Spiderman fought Together:

In the comics, Spiderman and Morbius formed an uneasy alliance during the ‘Maximum Carnage’ storyline. When Carnage started infecting people with the Carnage symbiote, Spiderman and Venom teamed up against him and his carnage army. Somewhere between the fight, Venom goes on a mission to recruit more alliance for their help which consisted of characters like Black Cat, Cloak and Morbius.

9) Blade killed Morbius:

In the Marvel universe, Blade is a Vampire hunter whereas Morbius himself is a pseudo-vampire, hence it is obvious that they have a very deep rivalry throughout many different comic issues. Their feud first started in ‘Adventure into Fear #24’ comic and since then they have clashed a lot of time. In ‘Morbius: The Living Vampire #12’ Blade killed Morbius while being possessed by a demonic presence. But later Morbius was also resurrected from death in the comic ‘Spirits of Vengeance #13’.

8) Morbius has friendship with Werewolf and Ghost Rider:

Since the ‘West Coast Avengers #5’ comic issue, Morbius has a very good friendship with Jack Russell (the Werewolf by Night), where he helped Jack deal with his Werewolf curse. After that Morbius and Werewolf were often seen together in many storylines. In the ‘Marvel Premiere #28’ storyline, Morbius and Werewolf formed an Alliance named ‘Legion of Monsters’ consisting other characters like Man-thing and Ghost Rider (aka Johnny Blaze).

7) Morbius is more intelligent in Vampire form:

In the comic book issue ‘Morbius: the Living Vampire #2’ it was alluded that Morbius has some hyper evolved portions of his brain, which were caused by a combination of his blood disease and pseudo-vampiric condition, which makes him more intelligent than his human form.

6) Morbius was cured by thunder:

Once during a storyline, when Morbius was fighting Spiderman a lightening thunder strikes Morbius, and to everyone’s surprise, the Lightening transforms him into a normal human again (though he still retained his thirst for blood, however).

5) Morbius helped She-Hulk:

Once Morbius was charged for his crimes by the government when he had turned into human. At that time Jennifer Walters (later known as She-Hulk) helped Morbius as his lawyer. Later, during an accident, Morbius selflessly saved Walters’ life and stabilized her erratic transformations into She-Hulk with a serum that he had created to cure himself.

4) Morbius was the assistant of Doctor Octopus:

In the ‘Ultimate Spiderman’ animated T.V. series Dr. Michael Morbius was portrayed as the lab assistant of Doc-Oc, and he also helped doc in creation of Anti-Venom symbiote. Later he injects himself with a bat serum (prepared by Doc-Oc) in order to gain power and respect from his loved ones, whose side effects transforms him into a pseudo-vampire.

3) Ultimate Morbius:

In the Ultimate Marvel version of Morbius, he is a ‘true’ vampire and not pseudo-vampire. He was the son of Dracul and brother of Vlad-III Dracula himself. He has all the powers and weaknesses that Dracula has as we know him. Surprisingly, this version of Morbius is in fact struggling with his vampirism and also he is a ‘Vampire hunter’.

2) Morbius-Batman connection:

Morbius first appeared in the comics in 1971, after the Comics Code Authority lifted the ban on using vampires and other super natural characters. Morbius appeared in the first Spiderman issue which was not created by Stan Lee, rather it was created by Stan’s right hand editor Roy Thomas. Roy wanted Morbius to have a typical blood sucking vampire look as we know from the mythologies, but Stan Lee suggested Roy to make Morbius’ look a combination of myth and modern world. Hence, Roy took the black latex costume and the gliding power inspiration from a very famous DC comics character ‘Batman’, who also resembled the look of a bat, and also he was very popular at that time just like Superman.

1) Morbius and Doctor Strange were partners:

Morbius and Doctor Strange have teamed up on several occasions throughout the comic’s timeline. Morbius appeared repeatedly throughout the ‘Doctor Strange: Sorcerer Supreme’ storyline beginning with issue #10. Also, Doctor Strange recruited Morbius as one of the ‘Midnight Sons’, a team created for only one purpose: Earth’s last defence against the occult. I hope we also get to see something like this in the movies too.

So these were some interesting and rarely known facts about Michael Morbius, the living vampire of the Marvel universe. Did you like it? If yes, then please share this post with others and also do let me know in the comments below, which are the facts that you already knew.

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