Morbius: Marvel Debuts All-New Look for the Living Vampire

Ahead of his feature film debut later this year, Morbius the Living Vampire just got a major upgrade in the pages of Marvel Comics. Unlike so many other Marvel characters, since he debuted in the 1970s Morbius has mostly maintained a consistent look throughout his history, wearing a tattered black outfit and cape with facial features of a vampire and elongated fingers and ears. The new series starring "The Living Vampire" from writer Vita Ayala and artist Marcelo Ferreira has changed the status quo in a very dramatic way. It's unclear if this new change to Morbius' physiology will be permanent but you can find out how he looks now below!

Spoilers for Morbius #4 below!

In the series, Morbius has been on a quest to rid himself of his vampiric condition (as per usual) but this time around has found himself mixing all kind of unknown compounds and chemicals to get the desired effect. The previous issue saw him create a new formula and inject himself with it, but as Morbius #4 reveals, it didn't have the intended effect and actually made Morbius even more of a vampire than before.

As you can see, Morbius is now much, much bigger than he has been in the past. Furthermore he has actual bat wings growing out of his back. Morbius has always been able to fly but these wings perhaps make that easier, though everyone will see him coming. Frankly he looks like a cross between The Incredible Hulk and the Bat-Gremlin from Gremlins 2: The New Batch. It seems like he'll be keeping this look for at least a little while as the solicitations for Morbius #5 and #6 hint at his monstrous appearance.

Jared Leto will appear as the titular Morbius in Sony Pictures' upcoming film based on the character but don't expect his take on the character to be the kind of vampiric behemoth seen above. That's not to say that he won't look have Morbius' traditional look for the movie, as the first trailer fully revealed his look for the movie.

"Wait until you see the way he looks, what we have done with this character, you will love it," producer Avi Arad said in a previous interview. "There are so many other great characters on the way, too. You will see. We're just getting started."

"This is the great thing for us now, that an actor like [Leto], and an actor like [Venom star] Tom [Hardy] wanted to have their own character. But the character they love," he added in a separate interview. "Both of them, very hard to get them to do a movie. You actually cannot get them. We went in, we sat with them, and everybody told us, 'Oh, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba.' Nothing. That's what he wanted to do. We went to this place with them, and he just…good actors want to be different than what they are."

The official description for the Morbius movie reads:

One of Marvel's most compelling and conflicted characters comes to the big screen as Oscar winner Jared Leto transforms into the enigmatic antihero, Michael Morbius. Dangerously ill with a rare blood disorder, and determined to save others suffering his same fate, Dr. Morbius attempts a desperate gamble. What at first appears to be a radical success soon reveals itself to be a remedy potentially worse than the disease.

Morbius opens July 31.