Morbius - The End Of The Living Vampire!

Clearly Marvel had high hopes for Morbius the Living Vampire. He's given a color series in Adventures into Fear and a black and white series in Vampire Tales. The latter turns out to be pretty good, but the latter suffers badly from a rotating army of artists and different writers as well. The strip spends most of its time in sci-fi wonderlands and seems to forget, unlike his B&W companion that vampires are a horror convention. Sadly, as the color series winds down, things don't improve all that much. 

Frank Robbins nails down the art for a few issues doing a good job in my estimation. The story by Doug Moench begins as a horror story but quickly dives down the science fiction route that had hampered the series to this point. 

Don Heck and Bill Mantlo step in as the Living Vampire finds himself in yet another weird dimension, this time battling a godlike creature with countless eyes. The police officer from the Man-Wolf series Simon Stroud is added to the cast and begins a hunt for Morbius as he had for Man-Wolf. He boisterous but just as effective. 

George Evans steps in to do the art as the story returns to Earth but keeps on pumping along. Martine who had been supportive of Morbius but often been used by his enemies against him, suffers a final indignity when she becomes a vampire herself. 

Frank Robbins returns for the final issue as Martine is at long last saved from her vampiric fate and Stroud for some reason lets Morbius fly away in the final panel of the color series. I'm often struck in these vampire tales how our heroes have such little regard for the nameless victims of characters like Morbius. 

In Vampire Tales things are much different. The series is written by Doug Moench and the art chores now fall to Sonny Trinidad who does an outstanding job. Under a striking Richard Hescox cover we find a compelling story of a lonely widow who is struggling alone against a desperate group of miners. She is kind but sadly her good intentions are not enough to spare her from tragedy. 

Under another Hescox cover we find a second story by Moench and Trinidad which has the Living Vampire battling the "Legion of the Undead", a gang of rich vampires who want to rule the world. There's some spicey treachery in this one before Morbius is able end the threat, at least some of it. 

This is all reprints but Bob Larkin's cover featuring Morbius is one of the finest images of the character ever done. 

In Legion of Monster, the Morbius story has our blood-thirsty protagonist up against a werewolf in a final story by Moench and Trinidad. I should also point out that these black and white stories share space with many ads and articles in which Morbius plays a role. 

Morbius is just one monster among many in this Marvel Premiere tale by Bill Mantlo and Frank Robbins which has this assembled group of creatures battling a demi-god from space. 

Mantlo is the writer again in this Marvel Two-In-One yarn which pits the Thing and Morbius against one of the craziest villains in Marvel history -- the Living Eraser. Arvell Jones and Dick Giordano supply the art. Morbius ends up using the Eraser's tech to send himself to a distant dimension at story's end. 

The story picks up in Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man when Morbius seeks to return to Earth. The first part of the story is a three-page frame which sets up a reprint of Marvel Team-Up number three. 

In the subsequent chapters written by Archie Goodwin and drawn by Sal Busema we find out that Morbius is under the influence of an ancient artificial lifeform called the Empathoid which lives off emotions. It possess Morbius and forces him to return to Earth where it can feast. At story's end Spidey lets Morbius fly off yet again after the Empathoid is defeated. 

He's back still sucking the blood of innocents in a story by Bill Mantlo and Sal Buscema. This time though at the end of the yarn a stray lightning bolt hits Morbius and mysteriously cures him (seemingly) of his vampire curse.

The follow-up is in four issues of The Savage She-Hulk. Mostly these are tales detailing the various woes of Jennifer Walters as she tries to cope with her still relatively role as the green bombshell. A potential cure though might be found by a researcher named Michael Morbius who is trying to find a lasting cure for himself as he lives under house arrest. Ultimately Walters becomes his attorney and gets the former "Living Vampire" off on manslaughter charges for his many crimes. These stories by David Anthony Kraft and artist Mike Vosburg are pretty good and deal with some complex issues but it seems a bit anti-climactic after all that has been written and drawn concerning Morbius. 

I got around to seeing the new Morbius movie a few weeks ago and I rather liked it. I know a bunch of these flicks get slammed for not having an upbeat theme, but this is a vampire movie. and I don't expect things to work out for the best in this universe. I was struck after reading the stories again after so long how close the movie was to the original source material. I'd forgotten all the stuff about the experiments on the ship. There are changes of course, but I expect those. Jared Leto was quite effective as the tortured "Living Vampire".  

No more Morbius to come, but reading through these two somewhat overpriced Epic volumes has really taken me back to a time when Marvel's ambitions often were grander than their capabilities. But in the dross, there are some amazing gems. Those stories in Vampire Tales have a lasting effect. 

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Tarzan And The Valley Of Gold!

I have been wanting to read Fritz Leiber's Tarzan and the Valley of Gold for many decades. Back in the early 1990's I took it upon myself to read as much of the Edgar Rice Burroughs canon as I could get my mitts on. I read about Barsoom, Caspak, Pellucidar, Amtor, and other distant worlds. I followed Tarzan as he trekked across a mythical Africa finding lost fragments of ancient civilizations and dinosaurs to boot. But at the end of that expansive Tarzan saga, some of it published after ERB's demise, I still had another "official" Tarzan tale to read and that was Tarzan and the Valley of Gold, written by Justin Leiber in conjunction with the Sy Weintraub production of the same name starring the freshly minted Mike Henry as the Ape Man. I'd seen the movie, but I'd head that the novel was so much more. The trouble was I couldn't find a copy in those pre-internet days as it had never been reprinted since its initial appearance as the twenty-fifth Tarzan novel from Ballantine Books. I looked a bit but found nothing, so I nursed my disappointment and moved on to other interests. 

Then I ran across the information that the folks officially tending to ERB's creations were putting out new authorized editions of the novels as well as the entirety of ERB's prodigious output and as part of that at long last Tarzan and the Valley of Gold would be reprinted. I snatched up a copy as soon as I was able but then it lingered awaiting the ideal time for me to crack its covers. That time has come and I'm happy to report it's a compelling narrative starring our favorite King of the Jungle. It captures the glories of a robust ERB tale but still has that singular Fritz Leiber flavor. 

The movie presents the bare bones of the story that Leiber tells in the novel. Tarzan is sent for to come to Brazil to help protect an ancient Incan civilization from a properly crazed villain named Vinaro. Tarzan attempts to save a young boy from that culture who has penetrated the mountain perimeter and has been captured by the bad guys. Tarzan saves him and finds the lost city and is able to turn aside the villains despite their advanced hardware. The movie is an attempt to give Tarzan a little of the James Bond glamour and it does so well enough. But the novel attempts to do so much more. 

There are several scenes in the novel not in the movie such as a wild gun fight in a car wash and an entire chapter dedicated to a bullfight, one which Tarzan performs in a style more akin ancient Crete than modern Spain. In the movie this is replaced by a giant Coke prop which is dropped on a baddie. In the novel we get much about the philosophy of the lost people and how they hold life so sacred that they'd prefer to die than to kill. They almost get their wish, but Leiber is adept at keeping a nice depth to the contending attitudes. The novel took me a few moments to get into, not uncommon for a Leiber novel I've found. I have to get my mind in a particular zone but once that's accomplished, I found the story began to run at an exceedingly comfortable pace. If you've seen the movie, the final battles to protect the valley are much different in the novel and much more satisfying. The villains are badder and more complex and the motivations of everyone, Tarzan included, have deft angles to them. 

I highly recommend Tarzan and the Valley of Gold for all Tarzan fans, and I'm delighted that it lived up to my expectations after so many years. 

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Dojo Classics - Swamp Thing The Movie!

I've owned Swamp Thing on video for years, but my copy is very dark and it made enjoying the movie rather difficult. I've noticed the same problem on television. I found the flick on DVD combined with some other horror flicks, none of which I own, so I took a flyer on it. This widescreen version is much brighter, and much easier to see. That alas doesn't necessarily make the movie better. I am now able to detect the weakness of the Swamp Thing suit through most of the flick and that really pulls you out of the movie a bit.

As a movie, I've always thought this one was just okay. It does a decent job of translating the comics story to the screen but alas it must do so with a meager budget. The monster suits were marginal in their own time, and look downright cheesy today. There is a smidge of that old-fashioned movie-making charm, but it's minimal unfortunately.

Adrienne Barbeau is fine in her role as Alice Cable, she bounces around the swamp sufficiently to keep my interest up when little else seems to be going on. The kid who plays Jude, a smarmy teen sidekick for Cable is pretty annoying throughout. Louis Jourdan as Arcane is pretty much stock Jourdan, a reliable villain. The other actors perform their functions adequately, and that says it for me.

This is merely an adequate flick, with a decidedly A-Team feel to the action sequences. There's nowhere near the level of mystery and weirdness needed to really give the movie a Swamp Thing feel. Part of that is the relentless daytime shooting which magnifies the flaws. Wes Craven really tries to stretch here and comes up quite short in my opinion. I'd have loved to see more of the classic Craven suspense. Swamp Thing is a diverting flick and a relic of the time, but little else. I do love the poster by Richard Hescox.

UPDATE: Seeing it again after so many years, I was struck for the first time by the atmosphere. Unfortunately much of the movie is shot in the daytime, not optimal for a horror flick, but despite that shortcoming, I noticed a resonance in the atmosphere of the film, a steady quiet to the storytelling, especially early on. The story makes more sense than I remembered though the theme that men hide what's truly themselves is somewhat distracted by less than convincing special effects. He still doesn't make much sense, but I liked the Jude character a little better this time. The cruelty of Arcane was evident this time, as Louis Jourdan does a pretty keen job of playing a man completely obsessed with his own needs at the cost of all others. (The fact my country is run by such a man now makes this detail more poignant perhaps.) Swamp Thing holds up better than expected.

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Vampire Tales #11 - Legion Of Blood!

Vampire Tales #11 is dated June, 1975. Sporting another handsome though more subdued Richard Hescox cover this is the last regular issue of Vampire Tales. Preceded in its demised by Monsters Unleashed and Tales of the Zombie the end of the series well and truly marks the end of the great monster trend of the early 1970's in comics.

Following a Bullpen Bulletins page called "Fearsome Features, Far-Out Fabrications and Fictional Configurations" which announces the end of the aforementioned monster titles the editors are not savvy enough to see the handwriting on the wall for Vampire Tales itself.

Morbius stars in a sprawling tale titled "Death Kiss" written by Doug Moench and drawn by Sonny Trinidad. In this one he finds himself on the cruise liner Muritania but soon is pitted against a cult of vampires who call themselves "The Brotherhood of Judas". He is directed in his mission of sorts by a beautiful woman named Morgana St.Clair who has secrets of her own. A host of coincidences make this one work, but it does feature some typically lush and evocative art by Trinidad. For a close look at most of the story in its original art format go here.

The second and final story in the issue is "Hobo's Lullaby" by John Warner and artist Yong Montano. This is a weird little short story about a legion of bums who aspire to get power by becoming vampires. One of their number objects and his story is the focus of our attention as the hobos battle the cops. It's a strange one and I suspect Warner was trying to say something about the predatory economic nature of society, but I'm not sure. Check it out for yourself here.

And after two blood-spilling years that's a wrap for the regular Vampire Tales series.

There is one more Vampire Tales magazine to come, an annual but more on that later today.

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Vampire Tales!

Bob Larkin
When Marvel jumped into the black and white magazine business in a big way in the early 70's, they did it with gusto. Riding the wave of interest in monster characters which had blossomed in the color comics, they sought to do a somewhat more "mature" version of these characters in the less restricted black and white arena. Dracula Lives and Monsters Unleashed featured iconic monsters, Dracula and Frankenstein respectively, characters with at least some name recognition beyond the Marvel Universe.

Not so with Vampire Tales, a title which featured the misadventures of Marvel's own Morbius the Living Vampire. Created in the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man, Michael Morbius was a neat fusion of science and sorcery and a striking character visually. He is featured in these issues with some very muscular artwork by Pablo Marcos, Rich Buckler and later Tom Sutton. Also on hand in this series was Satana the Devil's Daughter and sibling to Damon Hellstrom, and a spin-off character from the successful Tomb of Dracula series, Blade the Vampire Killer.  The series ran for eleven issues plus an annual full of reprint material. Then the black and white boom was done and the characters moved onto mostly four-color adventures since.

Until now.

Recently Marvel reprinted the whole of the Vampire Tales material in three not-quite digest-sized volumes. The reprints are on quality stock and featured the color covers in vivid hues. The magazines are reprinted in order and in total.  All the material is  here,  including vintage articles on all manner of things vampire and horror in general. It's always a hoot to read contemporaneous articles about movies which have long ago become classics. These little volumes are true time capsules from the early 1970's, one of my favorite places to hang out.

Never shy about its vintage material Marvel also included lots of stuff from the 1950's Atlas days in these comics to fill them out. It's all here. The volumes at twenty bucks stalled me, it seemed this stuff was worthy of single Essentials volume, but this past week I was able to bring two of the volumes home with some in-store credits and picked up the third one off Amazon for small money. So given that, I'm able to enjoy without feeling especially gouged.

Below are the covers of the three new volumes, done in a very low-key two-tone style along with the issues they contain. There's something disturbingly attractive about the truly lurid covers for Vampire Tales.

Pablo Marcos

Estaban Maroto

Jose Antonio Domingo

Luis Dominguez

Pablo Marcos

Boris Vallejo

Estaban Maroto

Boris Vallejo

Jose Antonio Domingo

Tony DeZuniga

Jose Antionio Domingo

Jose Antionio Domingo

Richard Hescox

Richard Hescox
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