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| Cover Artist: Ron Wagner |
Original Price: $2.75
Title: "Rise of the Midnight Sons, Part 3"
Writer: Len Kaminski
Artist: Ron Wagner
Inker: Mike Witherby
Letterer: Janice Chiang
Colorist: Gregory Wright
Editor: Bobbie Chase
Editor In Chief: Tom DeFalco
SYNOPSIS
In New York City, Michael Morbius watches a young woman as she walks down a deserted alley. He drops down on her, kills her, and drinks her blood like a wild animal, only to scream in remorse when he realizes that he's killed yet another innocent person. Meanwhile, Lilith and her two Lilin, Pilgrim and Blackout, enter a night club to find two more of her wayward demonic children: Fang and Nakota.
Ghost Rider and John Blaze ride through Times Square and arrive at a hotel, which contains the woman they have been sent to fine. Martine Bancroft answers the door and quickly fills them in on the history of Michael Morbius. He was a Nobel Prize winning biologist who was dying of a blood disease, and when he attempted to cure himself he accidentally transformed himself into a "living vampire". She was in love with him, and now along with a scientist that's working with her she will either cure Morbius or kill him to put him out of his misery. Ghost Rider and Blaze agree to help her, but David Langford, the scientist working with Martine, has plans of his own to kill Morbius for a mysterious "Dr. Paine". Back at the night club, Lilith uses Nakota's mutated eyes to locate the whereabouts of Morbius and Ghost Rider, then sends Fang on a mission to Langford's lab, where the Lilin poisons the doctor's serum with his own blood before leaving.
Martine, Langford, Ghost Rider, and Blaze track Morbius to his daytime sanctuary, and when they find him the vampire attempts to escape. He's quickly captured and brought to Langford's lab, but when the doctor injects him with the serum that's meant to kill him, Morbius instead begins to mutate and breaks free. When Martine, Ghost Rider, and Blaze get back to the lab, they find that Morbius has escaped. While Ghost Rider and Blaze leave to recapture Morbius, Langford calls Dr. Paine and tells him of the "complication". Meanwhile, Morbius is being assaulted by sunlight as he attempts to find somewhere to hide, and remembers his friend, a doctor named Jacob. Desperate, he reaches Jacob's apartment and crashes through his window. Morbius wakes up in Jacob's exam room and finds that his vampiric condition has been reversed, through only temporarily. Jacob theorizes that if he finds the serum that he was injected with they could develop a treatment to extend his periods of normalcy. Morbius agrees and goes to a leather clothing store, where he purchases a new outfit to use as he hunts.
Back at the lab, Martine overhears Langford telling three of Paine's minions that the serum was meant to kill Morbius. She pulls a gun on them, but Langford takes it away from her and shoots her. When Morbius arrives at the lab and finds Martine, she dies in his arms and he is unable to keep himself from sucking the blood out of her gunshot wound. Langford and Paine's men enter the lab and an enraged Morbius attacks them. The fight starts a fire in the lab, and after Morbius drinks Langford's blood he finds the serum that could be used to cure him. The lab explodes behind him, causing him to drop the serum to the street below, where it is caught by Ghost Rider, who has returned with Blaze. Morbius explains what happened with Martine and Langford, and Ghost Rider gives Morbius the Penance Stare to determine his guilt. Morbius vows that if he is to survive by drinking blood, it shall be the blood of those who deserve it, the blood of the guilty. Ghost Rider agrees, but before he leaves he threatens to return for Morbius if he does not keep his vow. Later, at the Daily Bugle, the discovery of several blood-drained bodies is overheard by Peter Parker, Spider-Man, who swears to find and stop Morbius.
ANNOTATIONS
Ghost Rider and John Blaze ride through Times Square and arrive at a hotel, which contains the woman they have been sent to fine. Martine Bancroft answers the door and quickly fills them in on the history of Michael Morbius. He was a Nobel Prize winning biologist who was dying of a blood disease, and when he attempted to cure himself he accidentally transformed himself into a "living vampire". She was in love with him, and now along with a scientist that's working with her she will either cure Morbius or kill him to put him out of his misery. Ghost Rider and Blaze agree to help her, but David Langford, the scientist working with Martine, has plans of his own to kill Morbius for a mysterious "Dr. Paine". Back at the night club, Lilith uses Nakota's mutated eyes to locate the whereabouts of Morbius and Ghost Rider, then sends Fang on a mission to Langford's lab, where the Lilin poisons the doctor's serum with his own blood before leaving.
Martine, Langford, Ghost Rider, and Blaze track Morbius to his daytime sanctuary, and when they find him the vampire attempts to escape. He's quickly captured and brought to Langford's lab, but when the doctor injects him with the serum that's meant to kill him, Morbius instead begins to mutate and breaks free. When Martine, Ghost Rider, and Blaze get back to the lab, they find that Morbius has escaped. While Ghost Rider and Blaze leave to recapture Morbius, Langford calls Dr. Paine and tells him of the "complication". Meanwhile, Morbius is being assaulted by sunlight as he attempts to find somewhere to hide, and remembers his friend, a doctor named Jacob. Desperate, he reaches Jacob's apartment and crashes through his window. Morbius wakes up in Jacob's exam room and finds that his vampiric condition has been reversed, through only temporarily. Jacob theorizes that if he finds the serum that he was injected with they could develop a treatment to extend his periods of normalcy. Morbius agrees and goes to a leather clothing store, where he purchases a new outfit to use as he hunts.
Back at the lab, Martine overhears Langford telling three of Paine's minions that the serum was meant to kill Morbius. She pulls a gun on them, but Langford takes it away from her and shoots her. When Morbius arrives at the lab and finds Martine, she dies in his arms and he is unable to keep himself from sucking the blood out of her gunshot wound. Langford and Paine's men enter the lab and an enraged Morbius attacks them. The fight starts a fire in the lab, and after Morbius drinks Langford's blood he finds the serum that could be used to cure him. The lab explodes behind him, causing him to drop the serum to the street below, where it is caught by Ghost Rider, who has returned with Blaze. Morbius explains what happened with Martine and Langford, and Ghost Rider gives Morbius the Penance Stare to determine his guilt. Morbius vows that if he is to survive by drinking blood, it shall be the blood of those who deserve it, the blood of the guilty. Ghost Rider agrees, but before he leaves he threatens to return for Morbius if he does not keep his vow. Later, at the Daily Bugle, the discovery of several blood-drained bodies is overheard by Peter Parker, Spider-Man, who swears to find and stop Morbius.
ANNOTATIONS
"Rise of the Midnight Sons" continues in Darkhold: Pages From the Book of Sins (1992) # 1.
Ghost Rider and Blaze last appeared in Ghost Rider (1990) # 29 and appear next in Ghost Rider/Blaze: Spirits of Vengeance (1992) # 2. They were given the location of Martine Bancroft by Clara Menninger, the psychic from the Quentin Carnival, in Ghost Rider/Blaze: Spirits of Vengeance (1992) # 1.
Morbius last appeared in Spider-Man (1990) # 13-14.
This issue came polybagged with a poster of Morbius.
This issue was reprinted in the Spirits of Vengeance: Rise of the Midnight Sons trade paperback.
REVIEW
"Rise of the Midnight Sons" rolls on with the debut of the next title, this one focusing on a long-time Spider-Man villain who definitely deserved his time in the spotlight.
Morbius was an intriguing character, and one that felt both decidedly retro and appropriately 90s with the amount of vaguely graphic violence displayed in this opening issue. Having a vampire as one of the anchor characters of Marvel's new super-horror line was an obvious move, but also one that came with its own set of challenges. At this time in Marvel continuity, all of the vampires (including big bad Dracula) had been eradicated by the Montesi Formula, and while that had begun to be reversed in the pages of Doctor Strange it was still a solid rule that vampires weren't allowed to run around the Marvel Universe. There were a couple of exceptions of course, which is what allowed Hannibal King to be a "proto-vampire" in Nightstalkers, but for a true vampire there was only one option left. Morbius worked well, because he was a vampire created by science and therefore divorced from any of the mystical or supernatural elements that came with standard vampires. Like with Ghost Rider, it allowed the creators to do horror stories without having to rely on supernatural or magic elements. Morbius was allowed to stand on his own without being saddled with all of the vampire mythology baggage...at least at first, but that's a story for a later review.
Like with the first issue of Spirits of Vengeance, this debut issue of Morbius was an excellent introduction to the character and the creators while simultaneously moving forward the "Midnight Sons" crossover. The latter aspect did take a backseat, more so than in the forthcoming Darkhold and Nightstalkers, but it was still present and it did provide significant alterations to Morbius himself. From what I remember, Morbius was a series that had already been approved for publication, and editor Bobbie Chase was able to rope it into the Midnight Sons launch. You can tell that Kaminski was much more interested in setting up Morbius as a protagonist in his own right than in just making it a Ghost Rider spin-off. That's what a lot of readers were assuming at the time, of course, that the Midnight Sons comics were just going to be weak Ghost Rider derivatives, and at least at the beginning each title was able to keep its own identity separate from the parent title. Morbius as an ongoing story engine had much the same premise as Ghost Rider: seemingly evil anti-hero choosing to prey on the guilty. On the surface, that's not a very distinct or even intriguing series concept, but when you factor in Len Kaminski's characterization of Morbius things get a lot more interesting.
Kaminski's take on the character follows naturally from where the character has been in the past, even though he was considered a "villain" by Spider-Man he was always a reluctant one. Morbius, some may remember, even held down a series of his own in the pages of Adventures Into Fear back in the 1970s, so he certainly was a viable feature character. Revamping him into a protagonist with his own supporting cast wasn't that difficult a job, even if it cost poor Martine Bancroft to be fridged in the first issue, but Kaminski really makes you empathize and relate to poor Michael Morbius. Kaminski even pays lip service to the inevitable Ghost Rider comparison during the confrontation at the end of the issue, with Ghost Rider remarking that he thought Morbius would be an important player in his life, but in reality he is just a small player in Morbius' life.
The other factor in this book's success was artist Ron Wagner, who had been a solid Marvel artist for the last few years prior to getting the Morbius gig. He worked on the Punisher titles for a while, then turned in a really fantastic stint on Ghost Rider (in fact, my preference would have been to keep him on Ghost Rider instead of Morbius, but that's just me). His work here is extremely well done, better even than his work on Ghost Rider a few months previous, and he really sells the story that Kaminski was telling. His work on Morbius himself is a great example of how to show a character that's hit the lowest point he possibly could, making the splash page of him in his new leather outfit seem like a genuine sea change for him.
Morbius was another success of the Midnight Sons launch, and while it wasn't the strongest (my vote goes to Spirit of Vengeance) it was definitely a solid debut.
Grade: A
Morbius was an intriguing character, and one that felt both decidedly retro and appropriately 90s with the amount of vaguely graphic violence displayed in this opening issue. Having a vampire as one of the anchor characters of Marvel's new super-horror line was an obvious move, but also one that came with its own set of challenges. At this time in Marvel continuity, all of the vampires (including big bad Dracula) had been eradicated by the Montesi Formula, and while that had begun to be reversed in the pages of Doctor Strange it was still a solid rule that vampires weren't allowed to run around the Marvel Universe. There were a couple of exceptions of course, which is what allowed Hannibal King to be a "proto-vampire" in Nightstalkers, but for a true vampire there was only one option left. Morbius worked well, because he was a vampire created by science and therefore divorced from any of the mystical or supernatural elements that came with standard vampires. Like with Ghost Rider, it allowed the creators to do horror stories without having to rely on supernatural or magic elements. Morbius was allowed to stand on his own without being saddled with all of the vampire mythology baggage...at least at first, but that's a story for a later review.
Like with the first issue of Spirits of Vengeance, this debut issue of Morbius was an excellent introduction to the character and the creators while simultaneously moving forward the "Midnight Sons" crossover. The latter aspect did take a backseat, more so than in the forthcoming Darkhold and Nightstalkers, but it was still present and it did provide significant alterations to Morbius himself. From what I remember, Morbius was a series that had already been approved for publication, and editor Bobbie Chase was able to rope it into the Midnight Sons launch. You can tell that Kaminski was much more interested in setting up Morbius as a protagonist in his own right than in just making it a Ghost Rider spin-off. That's what a lot of readers were assuming at the time, of course, that the Midnight Sons comics were just going to be weak Ghost Rider derivatives, and at least at the beginning each title was able to keep its own identity separate from the parent title. Morbius as an ongoing story engine had much the same premise as Ghost Rider: seemingly evil anti-hero choosing to prey on the guilty. On the surface, that's not a very distinct or even intriguing series concept, but when you factor in Len Kaminski's characterization of Morbius things get a lot more interesting.
Kaminski's take on the character follows naturally from where the character has been in the past, even though he was considered a "villain" by Spider-Man he was always a reluctant one. Morbius, some may remember, even held down a series of his own in the pages of Adventures Into Fear back in the 1970s, so he certainly was a viable feature character. Revamping him into a protagonist with his own supporting cast wasn't that difficult a job, even if it cost poor Martine Bancroft to be fridged in the first issue, but Kaminski really makes you empathize and relate to poor Michael Morbius. Kaminski even pays lip service to the inevitable Ghost Rider comparison during the confrontation at the end of the issue, with Ghost Rider remarking that he thought Morbius would be an important player in his life, but in reality he is just a small player in Morbius' life.
The other factor in this book's success was artist Ron Wagner, who had been a solid Marvel artist for the last few years prior to getting the Morbius gig. He worked on the Punisher titles for a while, then turned in a really fantastic stint on Ghost Rider (in fact, my preference would have been to keep him on Ghost Rider instead of Morbius, but that's just me). His work here is extremely well done, better even than his work on Ghost Rider a few months previous, and he really sells the story that Kaminski was telling. His work on Morbius himself is a great example of how to show a character that's hit the lowest point he possibly could, making the splash page of him in his new leather outfit seem like a genuine sea change for him.
Morbius was another success of the Midnight Sons launch, and while it wasn't the strongest (my vote goes to Spirit of Vengeance) it was definitely a solid debut.
Grade: A
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