New "Morbius: The Living Vampire" ongoing

[bored]

This story came up a few days ago. I didn't see a thread, so I thought I'd post it. I've had a soft spot for the Living Vampire for a while, and really loved how Dan Slott was using him so much in "TASM". Excited to see that he's getting a new title.

MORBIUS: THE LIVING VAMPIRE Rises in New Ongoing Series
By Albert Ching, Newsarama Staff Writer
posted: 25 August 2012 01:00 pm ET
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Writer Joe Keatinge (Glory) and artist Rich Elson (Thor) were announced in July as the creative team of Thanos: Son of Titan, a five-issue Marvel miniseries intended to tell the origin of the cosmic villain. Marvel surprised observers by canceling the series later that month, but fans were assured that Keatinge and Elson would both end up elsewhere at the publisher. As announced Saturday during the "Amazing Spider-Man" panel at Fan Expo in Toronto, they're back together on a new Morbius: The Living Vampire ongoing series debuting in January, picking up directly where the character left off in the recent "No Turning Back" arc in Amazing Spider-Man. Newsarama has the first interview with Keatinge on the series, discussing what's in the works for blood-drinking biochemist Michael Morbius.


ENLARGE

Newsarama: Joe, though obviously it must have been disappointing for the Thanos miniseries to be cancelled, it's definitely heartening to hear that you and Rich Elson are now working on a Morbius ongoing series. Given that change in direction for you and Rich, do you see any similarities, however vague or subtle, between Thanos and Morbius — either as characters or in your approach to the series?

Joe Keatinge: Yeah, absolutely. One of the main reasons I love the Marvel Universe so much is the complexity of their villains. There's not a lot of guys running around to be evil for the sake of being evil. That bores me to tears.

Doctor Doom has noble intent corrupted by the world's most massive ego. Magneto is someone who is trying to protect his species. Thanos does everything out of most likely the purest, albeit twisted love seen in a Marvel comic.

Morbius isn't that bad of a guy. He isn't trying to conquer the world. He's trying to do right. Heck, he won a Nobel Prize! But everything just keeps going wrong. Everything gets worse and worse and worse. His sins keep piling up, despite good intent.

Nrama: Also, how much of a Morbius fan were you before this gig? You've mentioned your fondness for early '90s Marvel in the past, and given the character's "Midnight Sons" visibility during that era, I'm guessing those comics were probably on your radar.

Keatinge: As a reader, I'm a Marvel lifer. There are photos of me two or three years old with Marvel Comics around. My fourth birthday involved my dad dressing up like Spider-Man and crawling over a fence in our back yard and scaring me to death even though I thought it was the coolest thing ever. During that same era we rented one of those Prizm Marvel Video Library Spider-Man VHS tapes that I watched so much my parents had to buy it from the video store because the physical tape was worn so much it tore.

So, I've been reading Marvel Comics for a long time with an obvious fondness for Spider-Man.

Morbius has been there through all that and I've definitely loved many of his different interpretations, whether it was the Gil Kane take way back when or Todd McFarlane's run with the character and so on.


ENLARGE

What Dan Slott and company has been doing with Morbius lately has injected a new life into the character and I was already adoring it. Dan really, really gets what motivates a character in the Marvel Universe, especially in the Spider-Man corner. In said corner, they're largely all tragic characters trying to do better. In the case of Peter Parker, the result is usually for the greater good. In Morbius' case, everything just keeps going to Hell. As a writer, there's a lot to work with.

Nrama: If it's not revealing too much at this point, what can you say about your take on Morbius at the onset of the series? As of the recent Amazing Spider-Man arc, it's clear that he was having some trouble controlling his bloodthirst, and Spidey pretty much washed his hands of him. But he's still very much a sympathetic character, and downright heroic at times. How do you gauge him on the good/bad continuum?

Keatinge: I don't want to say too much at this point, but the current Spider-Man run is obviously a major launching point for us. What happened at Horizon Labs is the major reason for where Morbius is at the beginning of our run.

Like I was saying earlier, I don't think Morbius is that bad of a guy. Nothing ever works out for him. It all goes horribly wrong.

Nrama: Genre-wise, how would you describe the book? Obviously Morbius is a character with horror tinges that comes from a superhero book, and, fittingly, the character seems to exist in something of a hybrid of both worlds.

Keatinge: There are very strong horror elements to it, but there's a lot more to it that than. The closest comic I can even think of in terms of the types of stuff we're doing in here might be Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol run, but we're ultimately having a very different end result. This is a book largely about people who have absolutely no easy role in society. The outcasts. The people on the fringe. The people of the Marvel Universe who are even too weird for the X-Men.


ENLARGE

Nrama: Morbius was last seen imprisoned at the Raft in Amazing Spider-Man #691. One guesses that he won't stay there for long, so what's his mission statement at the beginning of the series? What's motivating him (beyond, presumably, still trying to cure his condition)?

Keatinge: I really don't want to get into specifics about this just yet, but in general he's looking to figure out his place in the world and atone for his past as he does so.

Nrama: It's early still, but what has you excited about what Rich Elson brings to a book like this, visually?


ENLARGE

Keatinge: Rich is an astonishing talent. He has this amazing ability to ground the fantastic so damn well. The biggest blow about Thanos: Son of Titan not coming together was us not working together anymore, so when Stephen told me he was on board for Morbius, I was extremely thrilled. I'm writing for him all the way. I want him to have a blast with it.

Nrama: In the past (including the very recent past), Morbius has been closely associated with the Legion of Monsters. Do you have any plans for them — or any other monster-ly Marvel characters?

Keatinge: That would be cool, wouldn't it? Keep reading.

Nrama: That said, it sounds like at least part of the goal of the series might be mixing Morbius up with some different sections of the larger Marvel Universe. What kind of settings are you eyeing for the series?

Keatinge: That would also be cool, wouldn't it? Keep reading.

 

[Themanofbat]

We've been talking about this in the Marvel NOW thread...

 

[bored]

Well, now it has a home of its own

 

[SpideyForPrez]

[YT]VBN1uDbVN1Y&playnext[/YT]

 

[bored]

Ah, 90s writers...

"Everyone knows what a vampire is. Kids know what they do. They even dress up as them for Halloween, fangs and all. So... Let's make sure they don't think this guy sucks blood with his mouth. How do we do that?"

"Sir, let's give him crazy sucker-pad things on his hands! That only absorb a key component of blood!"

"Brilliant! Now, let's get back to putting together an Avengers show where they all wear battle armor..."

 

[SpideyForPrez]

Eh, unnecessary censorship and all I still love that show. And while it may not have been the most accurate portrayal of Morbius, it did introduce me to the character. That being said I'll probably give this new book a try even though I'm on a plasma free diet.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

What happened with Morbius in ASM? I'll probably try this out since Keatinge mentioned the Legion of Monsters will factor into it--their recent mini with Elsa Bloodstone was one of the best things I read from Marvel this year--but I haven't paid any attention to ASM in years.

 

[Themanofbat]

What happened with Morbius in ASM? I'll probably try this out since Keatinge mentioned the Legion of Monsters will factor into it--their recent mini with Elsa Bloodstone was one of the best things I read from Marvel this year--but I haven't paid any attention to ASM in years.

In a nutshell, Morbius was one of the "7" at Horizon Labs (he was the mysterious #6), and was basically using the lab trying to cure himself...

In the recent ASM Lizard story, Morbius dug up Billy Connors grave to get access to Connors' DnA in order to try and use it for his own personal cure (we've seen Lizard & Morbius blood working together waaay back in ASM #101 & 102), though he was also making the claimn that he could use his "findings" to cure Dr. Connors...

After being manipulated by a Lizard controlled Dr.Connors, Morbius went on a mini-blood lust forcing Spidey to beat the crap out of him and ultimately getting tossed into the Raft... Max Modell, the owner of Horizon Labs, was going to kick Morbius out after hearing about the desicration of Billy's grave...

Hope that helped...

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Oh, okay. That's not too bad. I thought they might've done something that would be a real problem for Morbius to come back from, since he was being quite good as basically the Reed Richards of Monster Metropolis with the Legion of Monsters. But he's still pretty morally gray, and those actions from ASM, while ghoulish, aren't really harmful to his super-scientist portrayal.

The "7" what?

 

[SpideyForPrez]

The "7" are the lead scientists that work for Horizon. Aside from Peter and Morbius they're all new characters.

 

[runawayboulder]

The "7" what?

The number 7 refers to the number of labs available at Horizon. It's kinda like the Augusta National golf club for geniuses. There's limited space and the late Marla Jameson got Peter his job there because of her friendship to Max Modell, the guy in charge. When all the new co-workers were introduced it was "so and so works in lab 3" and so on and so forth. Each lab is like a mini vault that's very private giving Peter a spot to both store and create his tech in secrecy.

When Horizon Labs was first introduced by Slott, there was a lab #6 that nobody except Max Modell and Reed Richards knew about it's occupant due to a confidentiality agreement. The mini mystery was revealed during Spider-Island that Morbius was "that" occupant.

And FYI, his work with Connors was revealed at the end of Spider-Island, showing him having the Lizard locked up, experimenting on him. The recent arc continued that story.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Ah. Cool.

 

[runawayboulder]

Ah. Cool.

Yup, so cool that you don't buy it.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

That was just a general indication that I understood your explanation of who the 7 are, not an indicator of interest in the story. I think Horizon Labs sounds kind of like overkill on the Peter-as-scientist front, to be honest.

 

[runawayboulder]

That was just a general indication that I understood your explanation of who the 7 are, not an indicator of interest in the story. I think Horizon Labs sounds kind of like overkill on the Peter-as-scientist front, to be honest.

Yeah, because everybody loved it when he was reverted to a virgin photographer living in his Aunt's house.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Well, no, but those aren't the only two extremes. I would've much rather seen him return to teaching, maybe by returning to his graduate studies and becoming a TA. Graduate school doesn't really require that much time if you're as smart as Peter is, so he'd have the freedom to continue as Spider-Man too. You know, something that highlights Peter's natural intelligence and tells us he could be more someday without dropping a multi-million-dollar lab in the lap of some guy who never even got a graduate degree, let alone published anything or gained any experience or credibility in academic science circles.

 

[runawayboulder]

Yeah but they did the teaching thing pretty recently. Slott isn't the type of guy to rehash stuff. I like the Horizon job. He's been on the brink of losing it for a while. If the rumors of Pete dying in ASM 700 are true, he'll have to find a new career when he eventually comes back.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Teaching would be a cliché because he did it like 10 years ago when JMS took over, but killing Peter off wouldn't, even though they just did that a year ago in Ultimate Spider-Man?

 

[runawayboulder]

Hey, it's only a rumor.....

I'm just saying that the teaching thing has been done but this scientist job is kinda new. Byrne tried to do it during the ASM 99 relaunch but he failed miserably. Howard Mackie took over, killed MJ, made Peter broke and he was living with Randy Robertson.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

I remember. Still, make him a lab assistant or something if you want to go full scientist. Dropping an exclusive, well-funded lab on him seems to counteract the last ten or twenty instances of the ol' Parker luck running bad.

 

[runawayboulder]

That's why I'm waiting for it to blow up in his face. He was on thin ice with his boss for a little while after Spider-Island and the right around Ends of the Earth, JJJ was trying to evict them from NYC. It's produced a setting for some great stories, the most recent being the Lizard arc.

 

[bored]

Eh, unnecessary censorship and all I still love that show. And while it may not have been the most accurate portrayal of Morbius, it did introduce me to the character. That being said I'll probably give this new book a try even though I'm on a plasma free diet.

Oh, I have a ton of sentimental attachment to that show. The old Saturday morning Marvel cartoons in the 90s were what first exposed me to Marvel. I first discovered Morbius there (well, that and "Maximum Carnage" for SNES).

 

[TheCorpulent1]

That's why I'm waiting for it to blow up in his face. He was on thin ice with his boss for a little while after Spider-Island and the right around Ends of the Earth, JJJ was trying to evict them from NYC. It's produced a setting for some great stories, the most recent being the Lizard arc.

Right, but whatever happens after the fact, he still got to be head of his own ridiculously amazing lab with virtually no prior experience as a bona fide scientist. I mean, how much pull could Martha Jameson have had to get Modell to be like, "Eh, sure, why the hell not?" when she suggested giving one of apparently only 7 exclusive, top-of-the-line labs at his disposal to some guy who used to snap pictures for her hubby's tabloid? Or were they "friends," if you know what I'm sayin'?

I'm saying she probably had sex with him.

 

[Themanofbat]

Also, Peter has had some of his work published since working at Horizon Labs...

 

[runawayboulder]

Right, but whatever happens after the fact, he still got to be head of his own ridiculously amazing lab with virtually no prior experience as a bona fide scientist. I mean, how much pull could Martha Jameson have had to get Modell to be like, "Eh, sure, why the hell not?" when she suggested giving one of apparently only 7 exclusive, top-of-the-line labs at his disposal to some guy who used to snap pictures for her hubby's tabloid? Or were they "friends," if you know what I'm sayin'?

I'm saying she probably had sex with him.

If that's true, I guess that's one she's taking to the grave.

But seriously, she felt bad for him losing his credibility trying to protect her husband, she just wanted to repay the favor. She only got him an interview. He still had to get quizzed by all the other geniuses about certain topics and Pete passed their little "tests" by applying his past adventures of Spider-Man. It was actually kinda neat.