Welcome to Comics Wiki Adventures, a weekly deep dive into just how unhinged comics can be. I will randomly select a character from comics and read their wiki each week.

I will then take only the choicest bits and serve them to you, over easy. What does that mean? I don’t know.

Anyway, today’s randomly generated character is: 

Marvel Comics Own: Morbius

Oh no. No no no no no.

I’m not saying it. You can’t make me. Just forget it. Sure, if this was a movie or TV show, we’d hard cut to the end, and I’d say it. But this is my column, so don’t bother to look because it’s not happening.

We all know of Michael Morbius by now, if by no other means than by the endless memes. But did you know he was a Spider-Man villain? You probably did, but how am I supposed to know? You may have had a frankly inspired idea for a term paper, and you plan to cite this for it. I don’t know you.

Anyway, it’s true! You see, Spidey was having a real tough time. His pal Harry was hooked on LSD. Yes, actual LSD, not some sort of space LSD. Also, I’m not exactly a “drug guy,” but I don’t think LSD is actually addictive. But give them a break, ok? They were doing a “very special episode” thing. We get it.  

So Harry was dangerously at one with all things and needed help. Pete gamely supported him in that time of need, presumably by watching various movies to see if they synced up with Pink Floyd albums. 

But Pete was still Spider-Man, which was already a significant drain on his time. So after their fiftieth viewing of The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, he knew he had to choose.

And he chose Harry. But if Uncle Ben had taught him anything, it was with great power comes great responsibility. So he did the responsible thing and invented a serum to remove his powers.

Now in hindsight, we can see this makes no sense. Surely Spidey should realize that this is still not taking responsibility but with extra steps. But imagine you just had to listen to your friend explain how well Ummagumma lines up with The Phantom Menace. Really inhabit that moment for yourself, and then tell me how good you think you’ll be at decision-making afterward.

But yes, you’re right; it’s a terrible idea even if it worked, and it doesn’t. Spider-Man not only retains his powers but grows four extra arms as well. If anything, he becomes more spidery. 

Understandably upset about this development, he sees Dr. Curt Connors, a.k.a. the Lizard, and asks for help. Which makes sense. Connors is an old hand at losing arms.

So Without Further Ado, Comics Most Vampiristic Non-Vampire: Morbius.

Ok, slightly more ado. Connors lets Pete use his beach house in the Hamptons with a lab in the basement to work on a cure. So Spidey races there only to find Morbius waiting for him.

Well, not waiting for him. It’s actually a complete coincidence. You see, Morbius is from Greece, where he is a famous Biochemist and Biologist. He was born with a rare disease that destroyed his red blood cells.

Naturally, he tries to cure it with all the standard tools in the bio toolbox, namely vampire bats and electroshock therapy. It worked, but it also gave him all the powers of a vampire. Except for the turning into a bat thing, but including the having to consume blood. So in a pique of bloodlust, he killed his best friend, then ran off to New York to try and find a cure.

Which brings us back to Spider-Man. 

Nah, We’re Talking About Comics Here. They Fight.

Not just them, mind you, but the Lizard too. He shows up just in time to fight Morbius over who will get to kill Spider-Man. I get Morbius’ angle on this since he wants to eat Spider-Man, not only to kill him. If he lets the Lizard do the killing, some of the Web-Head’s delicious radioactive AB negative. 

To be clear, I don’t know what Spider-Man’s blood type is. I didn’t do an extensive google deep dive to find out. And I certainly wasn’t disappointed to find that no one knows at all. That way lies madness. 

Morbius flees, but not before he bites the Lizard, turning Connors back into a human. Curt and Spidey figure that Morbius will also work as a cure for the extra arm situation. So they track him down, draw his blood, and it works!

To sum this all up real quick. Spidey gets extra arms by trying to shirk his responsibility. He then stumbles on the one entity that can cure his mistake, who happens to also be timesharing at the same place in the Hamptons. 

I Guess I Need to Explain

So in the Golden Age of Comics, the most popular characters were all superheroes. But the Golden Age didn’t last forever. When WWII ended, people started to get into other topics, like romance, pirates, and horror. 

I mentioned the resulting moral panic in my last entry on Alexei Luthor. The companies established the Comics Code Authority in response, a voluntary set of rules to stave regulation off. Among other things, this meant no vampires could appear in comics.

The CCA wasn’t entirely abandoned by Marvel until 2001, but the rules changed over the years. One significant change was in 1971, just a few months before the debut issue of Morbius. It allowed Vampires to be included in comics once again.

So that all tracks. But they must have been nervous about actually doing it because Morbius goes to great lengths to dispute the idea he is a Vampire despite being a Vampire. That is what a real Vampire would do, so fair enough.

We are then left with two possibilities. The first is they badly wanted to have a Vampire who was not a Vampire show up. So they hooked one of their characters on a non-addictive controlled substance as a motivation to get Spider-Man to quit. Then had him disfigure himself in an attempt to lose his powers that weren’t even necessary for him to stop being Spider-Man. All so they could have Morbius be the solution to it. Or second, they did all that first, then said, “We got the fake Vampire guy on deck, right? That should work as a cure.” Then just shoved him in. 

So That is Morbius!

Will all of these be more about pretty much anything other than actually subject themselves? Probably, so long as that is more interesting to me at the time of writing. 

Oh, I should mention that when Morbius was in the Spider-Man cartoon from the ’90s, he had weird suction cup hands. That was my first introduction to him, so I thought that was how he worked. I only learned otherwise after seeing trailers for the garbage Sony film. So it was good for something!

Thanks for reading! If you liked this article, you might also like this previous entry on Sir Wulf! Or if for some inexplicable reason, you want to check out something I didn’t write, you can check out this feature. It’s about a game that mashes up Castlevania and The Secret of NIMH.

Let me know in the comments below what you think is the morbiest character in comics and what character I should randomly select next! That’s the closest you’re gonna get.

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