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Nice cover by Land! As usual.
Every year, leading up to and around Halloween, Marvel publishes a handful of horror comics. The publisher trots out the usual suspects of its Bronze Age, post-Comics-Code-revision cast of monsters – Daimon Hellstorm, Jack Russell – the Werewolf by Night, Dracula, and Morbius. This year, Marvel seems to have cut back on its usual horror output, leaving us with a few Legion of Monsters one-shots and the forthcoming Essential Werewolf by Night Volume 2. This issue, devoted to Spider-Man’s old nemesis, Morbius, the Living Vampire, comes packaged with a backup story featuring Dracula and his daughter, Lilith. Both turned out surprisingly well.
I buy most Marvel miniseries and one-shots out of devotion to the characters, because they often – but, not always – have up-and-coming writers still refining their craft. Some of them downright fail. But, the Legion of Monsters one-shots have surprised me thus far. This Morbius story transcends the characters hokey origins with a tale that pits the living vampire’s humanity against his thirst for blood with a vivid internal dialogue. As Michael Morbius attempts to starve himself to death, he recalls his origins – a dying scientist whose homebrew cure accidentally transformed him into a vampire. As he remembers, lies on the floor of a church near a group of heroin addicts who debate what to do with him. All the while, his vampire thirst – personified by a talking bat – taunts him and dares him to feed on the wretched lot. When a young woman from the group overdoses, her friends beg the vampire to save her. Morbius must choose between allowing her to die and condemning her to a life of unending torment.
In this single issue, Brendan Cahill reaches for something far greater than a fill-in one-shot and creates a true short story worth rereading. Morbius and the addicts suffer for their respective addictions beside each other in a church where no god lives. Morbius’s vampire id parallels the inner experience of the drug users, arguing for and rationalizing his addiction. Their experiences ultimately collide like a train wreck, ending the story cynically but poetically. Michael Gaydos provides the muted watercolor art to this story, favoring a tone of subtle melancholy over the flash of so much comic art. Gaydos impressed the hell out of me with his work on Alias, and this issue reminds the reader why he remains one of the best comic artists working today. This simple, elegant story that proves that no comic need be a time-killer.
C.B. Cebulski provides an entertaining, if forgettable Dracula story in the last few pages. I hardly mean to condemn Cebulski’s writing, because I only call it forgettable because of the potentially jarring consequences that will likely never see a follow-up. Effectively, Dracula tricks his estranged daughter, Lilith, into doing a little dirty work for him to allow him to regain control of the Marvel Universe’s vampires. Were it the first issue of a series, I’d think more of it. On its own merits, it works well enough as an introduction. David Finch also provides some nice, if overly-stylized art. But, it comes off as another story Marvel will likely ignore the next time it decides to unearth Dracula for a guest appearance in another Blade series.
Questions? Comments? Let us know what you think at comicscape@mania.com.
