This might blow your mind. Know how all vampires are undead creatures of the night? Well, what if we had a vampire that was alive? Wouldn’t that be a trip and a half? That was probably part of the thinking of Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas when he greenlit this series featuring Morbius, the Living Vampire. That, and the feeling that there was basically nothing to lose.
Back in the day when Marvel was a much smaller company, they would often throw any random character out to the spinner rack. Maybe people would care enough to spend their 20c to pick up the comic, and if they didn’t care, it didn’t matter much. They had almost nothing to lose. If the comic sold, Marvel had a hit and could merchandise their new hero. If the comic didn’t sell, the startup costs were next to nil and the potential losses were minuscule. Why the hell not? People liked the king of vampires over in his own solo series in Tomb of Dracula so why not push out another vampire?
Thus, in the same month that the Punisher first appeared in Amazing Spider-Man #129, one of Spidey’s other arch-foes received his own series in the pages of the anthology magazine Adventures Into Fear. Morbius, the Living Vampire took the helm of a comic that formerly featured the Man-Thing (recently graduated into his own magazine that recently included the first appearance of Howard the Duck). In that same month, all the Marvels featured Evel Knieval toys on their back cover, with a toy that most of my elementary school friends wanted (I remember specifically becoming friends with Frank Favata, down the street from me on Memphis Avenue in Queens, NY, because he had this toy. We had so much fun crashing Evel into Frank’s Lincoln Logs!).
Morbius was an inspired but oddly handled choice for a lead character. He was inspired because horror comics were booming in 1974 (35 of the 118 comics released with February 1974 cover dates – almost 30% of the entire slate of books – had some sort of supernatural theme) and Marvel’s Tomb of Dracula was one of the company’s newest smash hits. “Morbius” was odd because, well, nobody had the slightest idea what to do with the comic. This reads like one of those series that just showed up on Marvel’s schedule, and any available writer or artist was assigned to take it on. The twelve-issue run of Morbius here features the first-ever professional art by Paul Gulacy and a later issue features very early work by P. Craig Russell. Other issues include artwork by Gil Kane and Frank Robbins. I’ll take a look at their issues of “The Living Vampire” in future columns.
The always-brilliant Steve Gerber wrote the next several issues of Fear after this big premiere chapter, and we’ll get to the first of Gerber’s issues next week. Fear #20, however, is written by Mike Friedrich. Friedrich was an interesting figure in comics in the mid-1970s. He had worked for both Marvel and DC by 1974, with a notable run on Justice League of America, among other titles. He also had a strong independent spirit. That manifested itself in his own self-published comic. At around this time Friedrich released the first issue of his “groundlevel” comic Star*Reach (so-called because it was neither an underground comic like the ones S. Clay Wilson and R. Crumb produced nor an mainstream comic – the first printing of the first issue notoriously featured some enormous bare breasts. But I digress again.)
Friedrich and Gulacy deliver a comic here that’s surreally delightful but disappointing in a narrative sense. The story in this issue is a baffling mix of overly-dramatic, fanzine-level artwork, strange super-hero action, heroic angst and strange religious men. The story doesn’t make any sense at all. It has an improvised feel to it that actually seems rather charming, since it gives Fear #20 a low-rent, b-movie feel. That improvised style becomes a hallmark for the series but also becomes one of its biggest strengths over its short run. Steve Gerber’s issues are luminous because of that ridiculously loose style.
As the this issue begins, Morbius the scientific vampire is on the hunt for blood. In this terrible page, he finds his prey with a lonely New Yorker:
You can see from the page above how inspired Gulacy is and how much his ambition exceeds his abilities. The cat in panels one and two looks terrible. The woman, who is supposed to look drop-dead gorgeous instead looks hideous. Morbius’s hand in panel three looks like something from a chessy 3-D movie. And the woman’s face in panel four looks like it’s swiped from a photo of Janet Leigh’s face in Psycho. There’s an energy to the page but it’s juvenile and unfocused. That didn’t stop at least one fan from raving over it. Letter writer Larry Clery wrote in Fear #22, “I do feel a desire to tell you that if you don’t let us see more of Paul Gulacy’s fantastic artistry, you’ll be cheating Marvelites of one of the greatest delineators – a la Steranko, Smith and Starlin.”
In fact, the comparison to Steranko was right on the mark, because Gulacy would become well known as a giant Steranko fan during his Gulacy’s run on Master of Kung Fu. Here, though, Gulacy’s art has sparks of inspiration, as in this extreme foreground scene:
(dig that surreal coloring!)
Or the movement in this sequence:
The character work is awkward but it’s pretty easy to see the spark of inspiration in Gulacy’s work. There’s a strong amateurish streak to the art but also an obvious love for the material. It looks like an inspired fan drew this issue (and you can see both the awkwardness and inspiration on full display here):
Friedrich’s story is more professional, but it’s quite weird, with an angry subtext that seems to betray a deep mistrust of organized religion. That becomes clear as the story moves on. After sating himself on blood, the vampire gets kidnapped by a priest and a rabbi (who don’t walk into a bar but do walk into a basement that’s full of medical equipment for some unknown reason). We quickly learn, completely without explanation, that the rabbi has great scientific abilities and the priest actually worships the devil. None of this makes the slightest bit of sense in context, and there’s been no foreshadowing of any of this, but Friedrich continues his fever dream of strangeness as the devil-worshipping priest orders Morbius to kill the rabbi. “I am entangled in a savage mystic struggle – the winner of which shall hold the very world in his palm!” he commands, in a monologue that reads like it could have come from a bad drive-in movie, and he sends Morbius to attack a limousine…
…and leads to a plot that will continue the next issue. That issue is by a completely different creative team and the only match-up of writer Steve Gerber and artist Gil Kane. I’ll talk about that equally odd comic next week.
I have no idea why Friedrich hates religion so much, or why he thought this issue made any sense, or why anybody would care much about this living vampire and his religious pals. One thing is sure. Next issue things will get much weirder and much more delightful.
