In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, discover how Morbius was initially intended to be introduced in Amazing Spider-Man #101 as Dracula!
Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the eight hundred and thirty-third installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false. As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends. Click here for the first part of this installment's legends. Click here for the second part of this installment's legends.
NOTE: If my Twitter page hits 5,000 followers, I'll do a bonus edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed that week. Great deal, right? So go follow my Twitter page, Brian_Cronin!
COMIC LEGEND:
The vampire in Amazing Spider-Man #101 was originally going to be Dracula instead of Morbius.
STATUS:
Basically True
In the links below, you'll see a link to my first book, which is a collection of Comic Book Legends (mixed between new ones and classic older ones). An amusing side effect of that book is that there are certain legends that I KNOW I've covered, but then I can't find them anywhere and that's when I'll remember, "Oh, yeah, that was one of the 65 legends that were only in the book! D'oh!"
In any event, one of those legends has to do with the fact that Morbius being a "living vampire" had nothing to do with the restrictions of the Comics Code. As I DID point out in a non-book Comic Book Legends Revealed, the Comics Code had nothing to do with the restrictions on Morbius because the Comics Code had been amended to allow vampires into Code-approved comics months before Morbius was introduced.
No, the whole "living vampire" thing came about for a whole other reason. You see, the original plan for Amazing Spider-Man #101 was for Spider-Man to fight...DRACULA!
You see, while Stan Lee had given up writing duties on Amazing Spider-Man temporarily after #100 (hilariously leaving the incoming writer to have to figure out how to deal with Lee giving Spider-Man four extra arms at the end of that issue), he was still the head Editor at Marvel and it was he who told Roy Thomas (who was temporarily taking over writing duties on the book) that he wanted Spider-Man to fight a vampire next.
In TwoMorrows' Comic Book Artist #2, Thomas had an interview/discussion with Lee and Thomas noted, "You were still involved editorially though, because this was right after the Code was liberalized, and you told us you wanted Spidey to fight a vampire. Gil and I were going to bring in Dracula, who was not yet a Marvel character, and you said, "No, I want a super-villain vampire." So we made up Morbius, the Living Vampire."
THAT was the hook of the "Living Vampire" idea, not to avoid the Comics Code but to do a distinctive take on vampires at the behest of Stan Lee.
Thomas recalled to Universal Monsters Universe how he and Kane then developed the look for this sort of "science fiction" vampire...
Gil sketched out the character with me sitting with him, and we discussed the general look… so it’s kind of hard to tell exactly who came up with what. After all, the costume is fairly generic… and the face is a logical one for a sort of human vampire bat. As you probably know, I came up with the name Morbius… which I later remembered was the name of the character Walter Pidgeon played in the fine 1956 film “Forbidden Planet.” No matter… there’s no connection between the early film and Gil’s and my (and Stan’s) Morbius except the name.
Amusingly, though, the success of Morbius likely DID play a part in Stan Lee wanting to do more vampire content, including what turned out to BE a new book about Dracula in the Marvel Universe...
So the Dracula connection eventually DID come across (and as you saw, Spider-Man even got to fight him at one point).
CHECK OUT A TV LEGENDS REVEALED!
In the latest TV Legends Revealed - Discover the line of dialogue that one Three's Company star said they wouldn't even say with a gun to their head!
MORE LEGENDS STUFF!
OK, that's it for this installment!
Thanks to Brandon Hanvey for the Comic Book Legends Revealed logo, which I don't even actually anymore, but I used it for years and you still see it when you see my old columns, so it's fair enough to still thank him, I think.
Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is cronb01@aol.com. And my Twitter feed is http://twitter.com/brian_cronin, so you can ask me legends there, as well! Also, if you have a correction or a comment, feel free to also e-mail me. CBR sometimes e-mails me with e-mails they get about CBLR and that's fair enough, but the quickest way to get a correction through is to just e-mail me directly, honest. I don't mind corrections. Always best to get things accurate!
Here's my most recent book, 100 Things X-Men Fans Should Know And Do Before They Die, from Triumph Books.
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Here's my book of Comic Book Legends (130 legends. -- half of them are re-worked classic legends I've featured on the blog and half of them are legends never published on the blog!).
The cover is by artist Mickey Duzyj. He did a great job on it...
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See you next time!