Comic books were under attack. After the publication in 1954 of his book Seduction of the Innocent, psychiatrist Frederic Wertham launched a campaign against comic books for inspiring what he believed to be negative behavior in children. The campaign was so successful it caught congressional attention, with Senator Estes Kefauver – the same man who took on organized crime – deciding to hold hearings investigating Wertham’s claims. In response, the Comics Magazine Association of America, a group of comic book publishers from across the industry, banded together to form the Comics Code Authority. Fearful of government regulators meddling in their industry, the CCA was created to be a self-censoring control group meant to assure consumers that any comic book affixed with its seal met certain standards and was acceptable for all ages. [Read more…] about The Living and the Dead: Morbius the Living Vampire, the Comics Code, & Marvel Comics’ Horror Boom
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Introducing Michael Morbius in the Morbius Omnibus
With the Morbius film due to make its debut in early 2022, one assumes that more people than ever are looking back to the early days of our dear Michael M. to see what makes him tick. Though Morbius would later go on to have a more complex arc that would bring many nuances to his strange morality, his early days portrayed him as bloodthirsty and ravenous, destroyed by the experiments that were meant to save his life but instead saw him cursed to be—you guessed it—a LIVING VAMPIRE!
Following his premiere in Amazing Spider-Man #101, Morbius quickly grew in popularity via the pages of Marvel’s various horror titles, enjoying brief stints in anthology titles like Fear and Vampire Tales. For fans of the bizarre horror/sci-fi/superhero stories coming out from both Marvel and DC during the early 1970s, Morbius’s early appearances will scratch a very specific itch, while newer fans might find enjoyment in the camp factor of juxtaposing superhero hijinks with the tortured self-loathing of vampires. [Read more…] about Introducing Michael Morbius in the Morbius Omnibus
The Essential Morbius (The Living Vampire) Comics!
What happens when a desperate Nobel Prize-winning hematologist with his own fatally rare blood disease has a crazy lab experiment involving bats and electroshock therapy? Well, if you live in the Marvel Universe, that’s how you get a “living vampire”!
Ladies and gentlemen, meet Doctor Michael Morbius… [Read more…] about The Essential Morbius (The Living Vampire) Comics!