History Characters / Morbius

* WhoWritesThisCrap: In ''Marvel Zombies'', Comicbook/WerewolfByNight takes a jab at Morbius: "Ha! You're such a cliché. So emo all the time about the tragedy of bloodlust like some bad ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' fanfic."

* TotallyNotAWerewolf: The MarvelUniverse has plenty of vampires. Morbius differs from the rest by his scientific origin (combined with DNA of a vampire bat) and the fact that he is very much a living being. How much this trope applies varies [[DependingOnTheWriter depends on the writer]].

* {{Dehumanization}}: When he is captured by ComicBook/{{Hydra}} he is referred to as a "thing" and an "it" multiple times, likely because they only see him as a piece of equipment that can be used to achieve their goals.

* AdaptationalVillainy: In ''[[WesternAnimation/UltimateSpiderMan2012 Ultimate Spider-Man]]'', he works for ComicBook/{{HYDRA}}.

Once Michael Morbius was a world-renowned biochemist, dying of an unknown blood disease and desperately searching for a cure. He found that cure, but, in turn, it afflicted him with a curse far worse than any possible disease: the curse of the blood-sucking night-beast; the curse of the Living Vampire.

* {{Expy}}: Like [[Characters/IncredibleHulkSupportingCharacters Doc Samson]], Stroud was created to serve as a [[Literature/{{Dracula}} Van Helsing]]-style nemesis for a monstrous AntiHero. He starts out as a purely heroic character, but his obsession with his rival gradually takes him into [[Literature/MobyDick Captain Ahab]] territory. Ironically, [[CharacterizationMarchesOn he becomes more villainous as his nemesis becomes more heroic]].

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* {{Expy}}: Like [[Characters/IncredibleHulkNeutralCharacters Doc Samson]], Stroud was created to serve as a [[Literature/{{Dracula}} Van Helsing]]-style nemesis for a monstrous AntiHero. He starts out as a purely heroic character, but his obsession with his rival gradually takes him into [[Literature/MobyDick Captain Ahab]] territory. Ironically, [[CharacterizationMarchesOn he becomes more villainous as his nemesis becomes more heroic]].

Once Michael Morbius was a world-renowned bio-chemist, dying of an unknown blood disease and desperately searching for a cure. He found that cure, but, in turn, it afflicted him with a curse far worse than any possible disease; the curse of the blood-sucking night-beast; the curse of the Living Vampire.

** The ''Strange Tales'' story where Morbius goes to New Orleans to help Martine's niece. It is left on a {{cliffhanger}} too.
** The 8-page story in ''Amazing Fantasy vol 2 #17'' sets up multiple plotlines that were never followed up on, like Nikos having been found by real vampires and turned into one after Morbius killed him so he could seek revenge, the vampires saying they will meet again because Morbius has to pay for poisoning the pure bloodline of true vampires, or the implication that every person Morbius ever bit without killing them turned into a living vampire as well.
* AdaptationalVillainy: In ''[[WesternAnimation/UltimateSpiderMan2012 Ultimate Spider-Man]]'' he works for ComicBook/{{HYDRA}}.

* AntiHero / AntiVillain: In his original 70's series, later got turned more into a NinetiesAntiHero. He is fundamentally a good guy... when he's not hungry.

* BatOutOfHell: An ''ComicBook/{{Exiles}}'' story arc features an alternate universe Morbius who was transformed into a monstrous bat creature when a sorcerer used magic to bring out the worst in him. He's also turned into a giant half man/half bat in ''WesternAnimation/SpiderManTheAnimatedSeries'' and ''[[WesternAnimation/UltimateSpiderMan2012 Ultimate Spider-Man]]''.
* BlessedWithSuck: His superhuman powers come at the cost of having an overwhelming bloodlust along with a mental desire to kill. His powers are actually dependent on the amount of blood he has ingested: he'll grown weaker the longer he goes without a "fix".
* BloodFromTheMouth: Inverted in ''Morbius'' v2 #2. Morbius coughs up blood just as the wound from a shotgun blast to the chest heals and gets back up.
* BoltOfDivineRetribution: In ''Vampire Tales'' #10 Morbius meets a woman who cares for him and tries to instill him with faith. After she is killed and Morbius has slaughtered those responsible in revenge, he yells that the only faith he'll believe in is that which strikes him dead where he stands. A bolt of lightning strikes at his feet, exploding the body of one of the woman's killers.
* ButterFace: He had kind of a weird-looking face even as a human; being turned into a living vampire made it more extreme, while it did wonders for his physique.
* CameBackWrong: After he is killed by Switchblade, Morbius is resurrected without his soul, which has remained behind in the afterlife. On top of that, he hadn't been brought back to actual life, but instead had been revived as an undead being.
* ComicBookFantasyCasting: Artist Gil Kane based Morbius' appearance on that of actor Jack Palance when he created the character.
* CreepyShadowedUndereyes: He is commonly drawn like this.

* CurseThatCures: Michael was dying of a blood disease. He found a cure for it, but that cure ended up turning him int a "Living Vampire," forced to drink the blood of others to remain alive.
* DarkIsNotEvil: He looks terrifying and he regularly causes huge messes for others when he loses control, but at the end of the day, he's a good dude with a whole lot of serious problems who tries his best to make the most of his situation and mitigate the impact of his feral spells when they do happen.
* DaywalkingVampire: Zigzagged. Since he's not a traditional vampire, Morbius is not killed by sunlight. However, his eyes and skin are very sensitive to it so he prefers to avoid it.

* DisappearedDad: Morbius grew up without his father, whom he does not recall ever seeing in person, and does not recognize his voice when speaking to him over the phone. It's shown his parents had some kind of an agreement that Morbius' father would stay out of his wife's and son's lives, probably because he was involved in crime.
* DontLookAtMe: On occasion Morbius is shown to be pretty ashamed of his appearance, such as in ''Marvel Preview'' v1 #8 while he hides his face from his friend Ronson's daughter and wants her out before she sees him. He does this again in ''Morbius'' v1 #1 and says these exact words when he is confronted by his ex-fiancée Martine.
* EeriePaleSkinnedBrunette: His origin story in ''Amazing Spider-Man'' 699.1 shows he fit this trope even before becoming a living vampire, having black hair and a rather pale complexion due to his blood disease. Becoming a vampire made it more extreme.

* EvilMakesYouUgly: When possessed by the Lilin Bloodthirst Morbius gets even uglier than normal.

* FurAgainstFang: The first couple of times Morbius the Living Vampire and ComicBook/WerewolfByNight's paths cross, they end up fighting, but it's not anything personal: Morbius is subject to HorrorHunger and the werewolf will attack anything that moves when it's a full moon. Over the years they grow to be best friends, although the occasional fighting is not something they get rid off entirely.
* GeniusBruiser: He was a brilliant scientist prior to his transformation which gave him considerably enhanced physical abilities.
* GeniusCripple: Before being 'cured' and turned into a vampire at least. In his [[{{Rewrite}} rewritten]] origin story he won a Nobel prize but didn't attend the ceremony, because even lifting a tea cup caused the bones in his fingers to break.
* GetAHoldOfYourselfWoman: Applied to Amanda in ''Vampire Tales'' #7 though she suspects it was more because she insulted Morbius by calling him a vampire.

* GoneHorriblyWrong: The experiment that was supposed to counter his blood disease had some rather unfortunate side-effects.
* GoodHairEvilHair: The soulpatch/chin tuft Morbius often sports is most commonly associated with anti-heroes.
* HairColorDissonance: Especially in earlier comics Morbius' black hair is shown as blue.
* HeelFaceRevolvingDoor: Started as an anti-villain, then went to being the anti-hero, eventually got upgraded to a nineties anti-hero who constantly fought against Spider-Man yet would help people in need, unless he felt like eating them.
* HighCollarOfDoom: Has one when he is introduced as a TragicVillain in the pages of ''Amazing Spider-Man''. Later inverted when he becomes more of an Anti-Hero, sometimes a hero outright but still wears the same outfit, with the collar often being drawn even higher and more pronounced than it was in his first appearance.

* HospitalHottie: During his stint at St. Jude's several characters think he's quite good-looking.
* HumanShield: Morbius did this once when facing off with the ComicBook/XMen. He snatches Jean Grey and threatens to snap her neck unless Cyclops backs off. Scott just adjusts his glasses a bit and fires behind Morbius, striking a mirror and causing his eye-beams to re-direct into the vampire's back.
* HunterOfHisOwnKind: In the UltimateUniverse Morbius is a true vampire and UsefulNotes/VladTheImpaler's brother. He fights against vampires and prevents other people from being turned into them.
* HybridMonster: In ''ComicBook/MarvelZombies 3'' there's a zombie version of Morbius, who calls himself a vambie.

* IHaveYourWife: In his Marvel NOW! series, the Rose tells Morbius he has his mother, and gives him her wedding ring as a reminder he works for him now. [[spoiler:Subverted when Morbius reveals his mother died years ago. The Rose's employer, who provided the ring, knows Morbius would know the threat was empty — so it was the Rose who was being conned.]]
* IJustWantToBeNormal: The single motivation that has remained a constant throughout all of Morbius' appearances since his introduction is the desire to undo the scientific accident that made him a living vampire and become a normal human being once more.
* IconicOutfit: The red and black bodysuit he originally wore as insulation against the electric shock during the experiment that transformed him.

* InTheHood: The first few nights in Brownsville Morbius wears a hoodie with the hood up after he's escaped the Raft and is laying low.
* IntergenerationalFriendship: With [[ComicBook/WerewolfByNight Jack Russell]]. Morbius was already an M.D. with at least one Ph.D. and a Nobel prize under his belt before Jack had even turned 18.
* InterruptedSuicide: Due to overwhelming guilt and generally being unable to cope with being a living vampire, he has attempted suicide several times, but laments that each time someone has stopped him or brought him back.

* LimitedWardrobe: His black and red body suit. He's worn it for over 45 years now and though he sometimes switches things around he always goes back to it. Man must have one hell of a dry-cleaning bill.
* LooksLikeCesare: He is commonly portrayed like this.

* MoreTeethThanTheOsmondFamily: DependingOnTheArtist, of course, but sometimes Morbius has been depicted with a particularly toothsome jawline. In particular, a fanmade poster for the 2022 Morbius film depicts him post-transformation with ripped-off lips and cheeks, creating a toothy ear-to-ear GlasgowGrin barely hidden by his high collar.

** Subverted in the NinetiesAntiHero comic as this happens soon after Morbius has found a way to make himself human again, and thus is unable to defend himself against several robbers (but gets revenge later).
** Played straight in other comics where people have tried to steal from a "corpse" or robbers have mistaken him as a harmless hobo.
** Members of the [[PoliticallyIncorrectVillain Friends of Humanity]] attack him because they think him to be a mutant. He would likely have killed them if Spider-Man hadn't stopped him. (Then again, this is [[TooDumbToLive far from the first time]] the Friends of Humanity have made this mistake.)
* {{Mutants}}: He started out as an ordinary human being but was altered when an experiment involving vampire bats went wrong.

* NonhumansLackAttributes: An ''ComicBook/{{Exiles}}'' storyline introduces an alternate universe version of Morbius who looks like a giant bat. He is naked all of the time and doesn't have genitals or nipples.
* TheNoseless: Though he's commonly drawn as having an upturned or bat-like nose, some artists (such as Matthew Clark in ''Amazing ComicBook/SpiderMan'' 679.1) draw him without a nose at all.
* ObliviouslyEvil: A particularly tragic example in one of Todd [=McFarlane=]'s ''ComicBook/SpiderMan'' stories, where Morbius hides in Manhattan's sewer and makes an agreement with a community of deformed, mentally ill humans living here: he protects them against their enemies and those who reject them, and they repay him by capturing bad people from the surface for him to feed on, thus sparing him the guilt of having to decide himself who deserves to be his victim. Unfortunately for him, their limited intelligence cause them to see ''all'' people from the surface as bad people, and they end up delivering him several innocent hobos. When Spider-Man gets involved in the case and reveals him the truth, Morbius is [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone horrified]] to realize he unintentionally caused innocents to kill other innocents and runs away from the community.

* OneHeroHoldTheWeaksauce: He has all the physical abilities of a vampire, in part at least, including immortality with none of the traditional weaknesses except for the blood lust and his eyes and skin being sensitive to sunlight, albeit not beyond discomfort.

* OppositesAttract: Morbius and his fiancée Martine are each others' opposites in looks as well as personality. Morbius himself even wonders out loud how "an out and about society girl" could fall in love with "a morose scientist who can't stand the sun".

** Besides himself being different (notice the "living vampire" moniker), he also inadvertently created another different vampire called Blade, though this was eventually retconned as Morbius' bite not having changed him at all.
*** He also bites [[ComicBook/XMan Nate Grey]], and winds up sort of turning him. However, this was implied to be more thanks to Nate's vast PsychicPowers - essentially, he believed that since he was bitten by a vampire, he would turn into one himself, and since he believed it, his powers subconsciously made it happen. It didn't stick.
** The [[WesternAnimation/SpiderManTheAnimatedSeries '90s cartoon depiction]] makes him even weirder by giving him myriad small, leech-like mouths in each hand, causing him to feed by grabbing hold of victims and sucking out the blood through them, instead of biting necks. It was supposed to make him more "kid friendly". Most would say it had quite the opposite effect. He spent a brief period of time as a hulking anthropomorphic bat version of himself as well.

* PainfulTransformation: In his first solo series Morbius is able to turn back into a human for short amounts of time thanks to a serum derived from Spider-Man's blood. The change from vampire to human and back is very painful, with lots of screaming involved.
* PastExperienceNightmare: In his first appearance in ''Amazing ComicBook/SpiderMan'' #101-102 his backstory is retold through the nightmares he suffers, in which he keeps recounting the scientific accident and killing Emil. He is occasionally shown to be reluctant to go to sleep because he knows he'll have more nightmares.

* PeopleJars: Morbius has one in his Monster Metropolis lab which he keeps Werewolf by Night in after he is [[spoiler:infected with the zombie virus]].
* PeoplePuppets: In the ''VideoGame/SpiderMan3'' video game Shriek uses her powers to make him fight Spider-Man against his will. He repeatedly asks her to stop, to no avail.
* PointyEars: He initially did not have them, but later artists started adding them after which they quickly became a standard part of his appearance.
* PowerPalms: In ''WesternAnimation/SpiderManTheAnimatedSeries'' Morbius could suck people's plasma through holes on his palms.
* ProHumanTranshuman: Though genetically he is not completely human anymore, Morbius still cares about humans a whole lot, such as when he runs a free clinic for the poor and when he defends the people of Brownsville from the criminals that run the town.
* ProfessorGuineaPig: To his defense he was running out of time and had tested at least ''some'' parts.
* RageAgainstTheReflection: In his first solo series, Michael uses Spider-Man's blood to develop a serum that changes him back into a human. While out on the street, he is attacked by a gang who beat him up. Crawling out of the gutter they left him lying in, he makes his way across the sidewalk to look into a shop window and sees he has reverted back to his vampire self. He runs off after punching a hole in the shop window.

* RedAndBlackAndEvilAllOver: Introduced as a ''ComicBook/SpiderMan'' villain but later turned an AntiHero, Morbius' IconicOutfit is black and red. Originally his eyes were shown as pink but were later changed to red, making his entire color scheme white-black-red.

* In ''WesternAnimation/SpiderManTheAnimatedSeries'', he was mutated by being bitten by a vampire bat that he accidentally zapped with the Neogenic Recombinator whilst it was feeding on a sample of Peter Parker's blood he was testing it on. This results in a two-fer; not only is Spidey's blood stated to be the partial cause of his transformation, but they both transformed by being bitten by creatures exposed to the same bio-genetic altering radiation.

* ShirtlessScene: Both the 90's series and the Marvel NOW! run have quite a few of these.
* ASinisterClue: When Morbius is shown writing on something like a clipboard in volume 1 he does so with his left hand.
* SlidingScaleOfBeauty: Started out around XII as a human, with people laughing behind his fiancée's back for being with someone as ugly as him, and his attorney [[ComicBook/SheHulk Jennifer Walters]] saying he's weird-looking. Slides to XIII after being turned into a living vampire, with people describing him as looking like the back-end of a bulldog, and one of Spider-Man's first thoughts when coming face-to-face with him for the first time being "His face—it's hideous!"
* TheSoulless: After having been killed by Blade, Morbius is accidentally resurrected as an undead, soulless being. He is later brought back to proper life, but is never shown to actually get back his soul. It doesn't really seem to change him at all; he mentions his emotions are numbed somewhat but he is portrayed the way he always was: as a deeply flawed but fundamentally good person and caring doctor. The fact that he's soulless hasn't been mentioned in years and most writers even seem to have forgotten entirely.
* StakingTheLovedOne: Morbius staked (or caused to be staked) [[spoiler:his ex-fiancée Martine]] after she became a true vampire and tried to convince him to let her turn him into one too.

* ThirdPersonPerson: At times, though it's not very consistent from one appearance to the next.
* TotallyNotAWerewolf: The MarvelUniverse has plenty of vampires. Morbius differs from the rest by his scientific origin (combined with DNA of a vampire bat), and the fact that he is very much a living being. How much this trope applies varies [[DependingOnTheWriter depends on the writer]].
* TyopOnTheCover: Morbius' name is misspelled as Moribus on the cover of ''Amazing Spider-Man'' #102.
* UglyGuyHotWife: When he was engaged to Martine he wondered how he got so lucky.

* UndeathAlwaysEnds: Morbius was killed by Switchblade but not much later was resurrected as an undead being. True to his name, he reverted to being a ''living'' vampire about a year later.
* UnskilledButStrong: He's a doctor who spent most of his life in laboratories doing research before his transformation into a living vampire gave him tremendous strength. He doesn't seem to have much of a fighting technique beyond punching, tearing and biting his enemies, which gets even worse when he's in a blood frenzy that essentially reduces him to a mindless beast. But due to his strength he is able to hold his own against opponents such as Spider-Man, who on occasion even admits that he forgot how strong Morbius really is.

* VampireVannabe: There's a club full of them and they just ''love'' Morbius, who is pretty freaked about by the idea that there are people who actually ''want'' to be vampires.

* WeakenedByTheLight: Won't turn to ashes in sunlight like a regular vampire, but ''will'' quickly suffer burns due to his extremely pale skin and so prefers to avoid it as much as he can.
* WealthyYachtOwner: Subverted. Martine thinks he's bought a yacht with the Nobel prize money, but it turns out it's merely a rental.
* WhatHaveIBecome: His exact words after having been turned into a living vampire and killing his friend Emil.
* WhoWritesThisCrap: In ''Marvel Zombies'' Comicbook/WerewolfByNight takes a jab at Morbius: "Ha! You're such a cliché. So emo all the time about the tragedy of bloodlust like some bad ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' fanfic."
* WigDressAccent: In ''Strange Tales: Blade'', Morbius disguises himself as human to meet with Martine's relatives, which stretches quite a bit to PaperThinDisguise. Though he does wear reasonably normal clothes as opposed to his leather wear, he does nothing to his white skin, fangs, pointy ears or claws, making everyone creeped out by him. While he's not recognized as Michael Morbius, one of the family soon starts to suspect him to be a vampire and goes straight to ComicBook/{{Blade}} for help. Truly a Nobel-prize winning scientist at work.
* WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds: At the end of the day, Morbius is a decent human being given an extremely raw deal thanks to a terrible genetic dice roll, who then made an incredibly bad choice out of desperation (without really having any way to know just how bad an idea it was), and turned into an abomination as a result. He must spend every waking moment fighting off the call of the beast (which he generally does a good job at, but he can count on slipping or losing control in spite of his best efforts on a fairly regular basis), while also needing to feed and having his only means of sustenance be something that is usually fatal to the other party. Half of the reason why he is even a vigilante boils down to his need to feed and desire to at least have ''some'' good come out of it, and while he tries to be careful, he is all too aware that his efforts as a vigilante frequently lead to gigantic messes that he has to clean up because he lost control. While most of his allies are wary of him (for good reason) and he has caused a lot of problems for a lot of people, none of them can deny that his life sucks and he's putting in the best effort he possibly can to help others and not wallow in misery.
* WouldntHurtAChild: The only type of prey Morbius is rarely seen to attack. There is one character who is a child who is rapidly aging and being reborn and eventually demands Morbius to attack in her child stage; he tries his damnest to resist, but ultimately gives in this horrifically bizarre situation.

Originally a CIA agent who participated in several missions alongside ComicBook/BlackWidow, Simon Stroud eventually left the agency and joined the Special Police Task Force. Eventually gaining a reputation as the Task Force's best monster hunter, Stroud is brought into investigate a series of vampire attacks attributed to Morbius... thus beginning a long rivalry with the Living Vampire.

* TheBusCameBack: After being absent for most of the 80s, Stroud reappears when Morbius gets another solo series in the 90s.
* CombatPragmatist: A very tactical fighter who often uses surroundings to his advantage.
* {{Expy}}: Like [[Characters/IncredibleHulkNeutralCharacters Doc Samson]], Stroud was created to serve as a [[Literature/{{Dracula}} Van Helsing]] style nemesis for a monstrous AntiHero. He starts out as a purely heroic character, but his obsession with his rival gradually takes him into [[Literature/MobyDick Captain Ahab]] territory. Ironically, [[CharacterizationMarchesOn he becomes more villainous as his nemesis becomes more heroic]].

* SympatheticInspectorAntagonist: Stroud served this role for most of his appearances in the 70s. His transformation to KnightTemplar coincided with Morbius becoming a NinetiesAntiHero.
* VillainousBreakdown: During a particularly pitched battle with Morbius, Stroud suffers a psychotic break, forgets his normal combat pragmatism and futilely shoots at Morbius (who is immune to his bullets) until he runs out of ammo.

* TheDragon: Toward the end of Howard Mackie's Spider-Man run, Hunger became one to Senator Ward (Mackie's BigBad).

A former soldier turned mercenary, Vic Slaughter was originally the Captain of a mercenary unit called The Hardcases. Hired by Simon Stroud to provide extra muscle against Morbius, Slaughter was bitten by Morbius in the ensuing battle and was transformed into a transgenic vampire not unlike Morbius himself.

* ArchEnemy: After Stroud he's the strongest contender for the title.

* EnfantTerrible: Tara
* EvilCounterpart: Vic Slaughter

* [[GetAHoldOfYourselfMan Get A Hold Of Yourself Woman]]: Applied to Amanda in ''Vampire Tales'' #7 though she suspects it was more because she insulted Morbius by calling him a vampire.

* CurseThatCures: MIcheal was dying of a blood disease. He found a cure for it, but that cure ended up turning him int a "Living Vampire," forced to drink the blood of others to remain alive.

!!! '''Team Affiliations:''' [[Characters/MidnightSons Midnight Sons]]

* AlwaysSaveTheGirl: Some of this in the earlier comics, both Martine and Amanda. He's also responsible for She-Hulk's current condition, it being the side effect of a potential cure he was going to use on himself.

* ArchEnemy: Quite possibly the closest Morbius has to one.

->''"Tonight I'll end the nightmares. Tonight they'll all see I was right."''

* TheOnlyOneAllowedToDefeatYou: Feels this way toward Morbius.

* HeWhoFightsMonsters: Stroud gets hit by this hard. Initially an honorable man who only used lethal force on threats that were truly inhuman, Stroud's obsession with avenging his previous defeats eventually turns him into an AxCrazy KnightTemplar who compromises all his principles, and alienates most of his allies, in his increasingly psychotic obsession with destroying Morbius.

Originally a HYDRA agent, Crown had the misfortune of battling both Spider-Man and Morbius during one particularly fateful assignment. In the ensuing battle, Crown was bitten by Morbius and transformed into a "Living Vampire" himself. Taking the name Hunger, Crown set up shop in the sewers of New York, occasionally abducting surface dwellers and turning him into his cattle.

->''Now you have to die. For the deaths of my Hardcases, and just because I despise the air you breathe.''

* OneHeroHoldTheWeaksauce: He has all the physical abilities of a vampire, in part at least, with none of the traditional weaknesses except for the blood lust.

* WeakenedByTheLight: Won't turn to ashes in sunlight like a regular vampire, but ''will'' quickly suffer burns due to his extremely pale skin.

[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/morbius_the_living_vampire_vol_2_1_textless.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:300:''"I am not a vampire. I am not a super villain. I am not a super hero."'']]

Created by Roy Thomas and Gil Kane, Morbius has fought ComicBook/SpiderMan ever since his first appearance in ''The Amazing Spider-Man'' #101 (October 1971), occasionally working together or fighting against several other [[Creator/MarvelComics Marvel]] characters, perhaps most commonly with ComicBook/{{Blade}}. He was also seen as a character in ''WesternAnimation/SpiderManTheAnimatedSeries''.

Dr. Michael Morbius, also known as "The Living Vampire", was a Nobel Prize-winning scientist suffering from a fatal blood disease. In hopes of curing this illness he treated himself with fluids distilled from vampire bats and, as a last chance, tried shock-treatment as a way to electrically create blood cells. This "cured" him by transforming him into a vampiric human mutate that lusts after blood as a way to counter the disease. He also gained several other vampiric attributes, such as white skin, fangs, [[WeakenedByTheLight an allergy to sunlight]] (since he isn't undead, sunlight won't kill him outright, but his lack of melanin leads to quick burns), SuperStrength, a HealingFactor, and hollow bones which give him the capability of flight. Later he gains more supernatural abilities like hypnosis.

Because of his need to drink blood from living victims (stored blood contains too much anticoagulants for his body to handle, or the need to kill stays even after the physical need is satisfied) Morbius wallows in guilt and tries to find both an alternative substance to blood and a way to cure himself -- without much success. At best he has been able to change back into a human for some periods of time, but either has soon reverted back or retained the need to drink blood.

Despite all this, he's generally willing to help or at least unwilling to harm people he sees as innocent or has a closer relationship with, and he has consistently tried his best to only target violent or incorrigible criminals, and he also regularly tries to use his skill and knowledge as a scientist to give back to the community to the best of his ability.

He had a new series in January 2013 as part of Comicbook/MarvelNOW that lasted nine issues. A new series, written by Vita Ayala and penciled by Marcelo Ferreira, debuted in 2019.

In 2018, it was announced that Creator/{{Sony}} was developing a [[Film/Morbius2022 film]] centering on the character for their [[Film/SonysSpiderManUniverse shared film universe]], with Creator/JaredLeto in the main role. It is scheduled to be released on January 21, 2022.

If you were looking for the unconnected ''Series/DoctorWho'' story "The Brain Of Morbius", go [[{{Recap/DoctorWhoS13E5TheBrainOfMorbius}} here]].

[[AC:Comics]]
* ''Adventure into Fear'' #20-31 (1974-1975)
* ''Vampire Tales'' #1-11 (1973-1975)
* ''Morbius: The Living Vampire'' #1-32 (1992-1995)
* ''Legion of Monsters: Morbius'' #1 (2007)
* ''Morbius: The Living Vampire'' #1-9 (2013)
* ''Morbius: The Living Vampire'' #1-current (2019)

[[AC:Live-Action Films]]

* ''Film/{{Morbius|2022}}''

[[AC:Video Games]]
* ''Spider-Man & Venom: ComicBook/MaximumCarnage''
* ''VideoGame/SpiderMan3''
* ''VideoGame/SuperHeroSquadOnline''
* ''VideoGame/MarvelAvengersAlliance''
* ''VideoGame/TheAmazingSpiderMan''
* ''VideoGame/SpiderManUnlimited''
* ''VideoGame/LEGOMarvelSuperHeroes2''
* ''VideoGame/MarvelUltimateAlliance3TheBlackOrder''

[[AC:Western Animation]]
* ''WesternAnimation/SpiderManTheAnimatedSeries''
* ''WesternAnimation/UltimateSpiderMan''

!!Tropes: