Review by Frank Plowright
It seems to be the case that when Marvel knew a Morbius film was due, they realised there was no greatest hits collection for any curious moviegoers, and Preludes and Nightmares solves that crisis by packaging the living vampire’s earliest appearances along with a 2013 solo outing.
The short review is to keep your expectations low despite this being by some distance the best gathering of 1970s Morbius material, largely because it’s all well drawn.
Stan Lee ended Spider-Man’s 100th issue with Peter Parker having taken an untested serum and suddenly growing two extra pairs of arms. It wasn’t his finest hour, and Roy Thomas was handed the joyful task of continuing the story. Thomas pitted Spider-Man against a new villain, a scientist who became a vampire via trying to cure his own rare blood condition, and threw in the Lizard as a complication. The melodrama is cranked up to maximum, but something about Morbius must have struck a chord as he was rapidly returned by Gerry Conway for two stories in which Spider-Man teams first with the Human Torch, and then with the X-Men.
What distinguishes all those early stories is their being drawn by Gil Kane. How good is Kane? So good that he almost convinces you Spider-Man with six arms is a good idea. Page after dynamic page has Morbius cursing his own condition, his needs and his fate, and Kane endows them all with a pathos the frankly poor scripting doesn’t deserve. The highlight is the X-Men issue where he dazzles with his viewpoints and layouts.
The collection then jumps a year and the excess of Mike Friedrich and Paul Gulacy supplying the first Morbius solo outing. Gulacy wants to be Jim Steranko, but hasn’t the finesse very early in his career, and Friedrich overwrites the idea of a rabbi trying to help Morbius cure himself. Does Morbius drain the blood of the most innocent child he’s ever seen as suggested on the final page? Well to save you picking up The Living Vampire, featuring all Morbius’ early appearances no matter how terrible, we’ll reveal he doesn’t.
The 2013 story is largely by Joe Keatinge and Valentine De Landro, and for the first time Morbius actually engenders the sympathy intended from the start. It fleshes out an upbringing cursed by his condition, which keeps him confined, sees him so easily injured, and conveys the desperation that would lead to his actually making his life so much worse in attempting to cure it. De Landro creates a moody landscape to match the tragedy of what’s the only decent merger of writing and art found here.
All but the Keatinge and De Landro story are also supplied in the Epic Collection The Living Vampire, accompanied by some truly terrible material.
