In a happy bit of coincidence for Marvel Comics (...or is it..?), on Wednesday, November 10 Morbius the Living Vampire will stop by the pages of Amazing Spider-Man #78, just days removed from Sony's newest trailer for January 2022's Morbius film starring Jared Leto.
Amazing Spider-Man #78 ... or Amazing Spider-Man #879 for you legacy number old-timers, is by writer Kelly Thompson and artist Sara Pichelli, with a hockey assist from the "Beyond Board" of writers - Saladin Ahmed, Cody Ziglar, Patrick Gleason, and Zeb Wells.
Brand name artist Arthur Adams provides the cover.
It's just Ben Reilly's second outing since his return and his Beyond Corporation-sponsored tenure as Spider-Man, and according to the publisher, the Spidey-Morbius face-off does not go well for Ben, and he gets the "the hurt" put on him in a big way.
In Marvel comic books, Dr. Michael Morbius is a Greek biologist and biochemist who suffers from a rare blood disorder. While traveling to New York, Morbius attempted to find a cure for his lifelong illness, which, at that stage, was actually killing him. Morbius experimented with a radical treatment involving vampire bat DNA and electroshock therapy.
Instead, Morbius became afflicted with a far worse disease that resembled the bloodlust of supernatural vampirism. The reason Morbius' powers are science-based and not supernatural is that the Comics Code Authority had a rule stating that supernatural characters that had a demonic nature weren't allowed to be published.
Since his creation in 1971, Morbius has tiptoed the line between villain and anti-hero and somewhat like another classic Spider-Man villain the Lizard, goes through cycles of keeping his affliction under control and not.
By the looks of these Amazing Spider-Man #78 preview pages, he appears to be in a "not" phase at the moment.
Check them out in our preview gallery:
Check out all the Spider-Man comics, graphic novels, collections from Marvel arriving in 2021 and beyond.
