Black and White Wednesday: "Morbius" by Gerber and Marcos

Greetings, Groove-ophiles! Marvel Comics had a habit of making villains into heroes, so when the Comics Code relaxed and opened the floodgates for supernatural shenanigans in comicbook land, they started producing monster-ous heroes and villains by the bushel. As tradition dictated, some of those villains became heroes, the first and best of which was Michal Morbius, better known simply as Morbius, the Living Vampire who was introduced as a villain in Amazing Spider-Man #101 by creators Roy Thomas and Gil Kane (you can read his origin from ASM #102 right here). When the House of Ideas needed a lead feature for their new Vampire Tales b&w mag (they couldn't use the obvious choice, Dracula, 'cause he was getting a b&w mag of his own), Morbius got the nod. So here is the Living Vampire in his very first solo adventure in glorious black and white from Vampire Tales #1 (May 1973) courtesy Steve Gerber and Pablo Marcos.

(Personal note: while I still own our original coverless copy, my mom actually bought the first ish of Vampire Tales for my sister who'd never bought a Marvel mag before. I wound up with VP #1, my sister went back to Casper and Richie Rich!)