Morbius
Page 27
“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your girlfriend?” he said, using a sharpened finger to pick pieces of plastic and metal out of his teeth. To his surprise, the woman stood and showed no fear.
Damn…
“I have a name. And it’s Fiona,” she replied.
“Ooooh, I like you,” Carnage replied.
Then Lattimer spoke up, his voice nowhere near as steady.
“You can kill me,” he said, standing up and looking Carnage in the eyes. “But let her go. Please…” The little man was shaking. Carnage laughed and pushed him back down into his seat.
“Kill you?” he said. “Are you kidding me? I loved every minute of that. Whatever your gig is here, I wanna invest, Frankie-boy! I mean, come on! A monster fight club? This could be my home away from home. You bring me more playmates to kill, and I’ll make you very, very rich.”
Carnage held out his hand, the huge toothy smile widening across his inhuman face.
“Deal?”
Franklin looked over at Fiona, and the two locked eyes for a moment. Around them, those audience members who remained had stopped fleeing and were watching the encounter with rapt interest. A cunning smile appeared on Fiona’s face, and she nodded. Franklin’s eyes widened, and then he nodded, too, and mouthed the words “I love you.”
Carnage almost killed him right then and there.
No, he was in too good a mood to ruin the moment.
Franklin took hold of the much-larger hand.
“Deal.”
A BRIEF HISTORY OF BLOOD TIES
WHEN I got hired to write a Morbius novel, I was incredibly excited, to say the least. I’ve been reading Marvel comic books since… well, since I could read. My oldest brother had been a pretty avid collector in his early teens, in the late ’70s, which would have made me around six or seven when I started reading his digest-sized Spider-Man reprints (the ones by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko), plus whatever comics he had picked up at our local Dairy Mart. And let me tell you, I was hooked.
My brother eventually outgrew comic books, but I never did. He bequeathed (or I stole, depending on who you ask) his collection of 200 comics and that collection eventually ballooned to 15,000 issues by the time I went to college and gave up the medium for about seven years.
Thinking back to the years where I bought and organized comics like my life depended on it, I realize that I was always drawn to dark stories, especially ones that featured the more obscure characters. I was particularly fascinated with those heroes and villains who could easily wear either label… like the blind vigilante The Shroud who first appeared in, of all places, Super-Villain Team-Up; or DC’s incredibly bizarre team book, The Night Force. (I bought the first issue of this series, which featured an orgy and a demon sacrifice, at the self-same Dairy Mart, which was a family establishment, by the way.)
And then there was Morbius. I was too young to have read his first appearance in Amazing Spider-Man #101—in fact, it was published six months before I was born—but I became aware of the character very quickly as soon as I immersed myself in the ever-expanding world of Marvel. There was just something very cool about him… something undeniably tragic and cool… a living vampire. I followed the character over the years, intrigued by him, but never imagined that I would someday write a novel starring him.
I’ve made a bit of a writing and editing career on rebooting characters and finding “side” stories to explore. I wrote a Flash Gordon comic book reboot after reading literally every single Alex Raymond comic strip; told an Island of Misfit Toys side story that slots perfectly into the original Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer stop-animation Christmas movie (which I watched every year growing up); co-plotted and co-published the Atlas Comics reboot (from a company created by the founder of Marvel, Martin Goodman), and even co-wrote one of the titles, Phoenix, with Jim Krueger. I conceived of and edited a Psycho side story book that takes place in the middle of the Psycho II novel; and I edited eight Walking Dead novels/side-stories, as well.
In other words, I’m a big fan of playing in other people’s sandboxes, and of doing the necessary research.
Blood Ties was no different. After landing this gig, I took it upon myself (with Titan and Marvel’s generous help) to read every single Morbius story from 1971 to the present, many of which I had never encountered before. It was a rare treat to see this character in action over his formative years, and that’s exactly where inspiration struck.
After appearing in Spider-Man comics and spending some time in Adventure into Fear, Morbius then appeared in a black-and-white magazine called Vampire Tales. It was an edgier Marvel title, featuring a number of horror characters, and Morbius really took flight in those pages (pun only slightly intended). In Vampire Tales #2, dated October 1973 (published when I was one and a half), Don McGregor (writer), Rich Buckler and Pablo Marcos (artists) introduced Amanda Saint, a relatively innocuous supporting character who is Morbius’ intended victim on the opening page of the short story.
However, Amanda is beset upon by members of the Demon-Fire cult, and for some reason, Morbius decides that he will save her life, to become her guardian going forward.
As Amanda continued to appear in Vampire Tales with Morbius for the next several issues, as the living vampire helped her find her mother and then her father (spoiler alert: neither reunion ends well), I became fascinated with the dynamic between the two of them. Amanda started out as a potential meal, but then became the closest thing he had to a friend in any of those early issues that I read.
Thus, the idea of Blood Ties was born. A Morbius “side story” about the complicated friendship between a vampire and his once-intended victim. And also a story about Amanda: a woman who had been betrayed by almost everyone in her life, and the unlikely companionship she finds in someone who might choose to murder (and eat) her at any time.
Who says relationships aren’t complicated?
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I’D LIKE to first and foremost thank Steve Saffel at Titan, who read my previous horror novel, The Chrysalis, and saw something in those pages that said, “This guy deserves a shot at Morbius.” This was a dream gig and I had a blast writing it. Thanks again, Steve.
Thank you to Jeff Youngquist at Marvel for his additional notes and edits, and to Joanna Harwood at Titan for helping shepherd the book along.
Thanks to Mark Manne for originally coming up with the idea of Morbius drinking “enhanced” blood—that kernel was the thing that really got this plot going in my head, and I appreciate it.
My deep appreciation and admiration go to composer Hans Zimmer, even though he has no idea who I am. I listened to the Blade Runner 2049 soundtrack while writing this book; it is phenomenal mood music when writing both horror and deep emotion. And speaking of that movie, I didn’t even realize when I picked that album to write to (unless it was subconscious?) that Jared Leto is in both Blade Runner 2049 and Morbius, so I guess I should thank Jared, too. He doesn’t know who I am either, though.
My everlasting thanks to every teacher I had who encouraged my love of writing. It’s incredible what a few positive words can do for a kid’s esteem and creativity.
A big thank you, as always, to my mom and my dad for always supporting my dreams. It may seem like an obvious thing but not every parent does it, and it’s been a lifelong lesson to me that I’m now passing on to my daughters.
Finally, thanks to those selfsame daughters and to my wife, Kim. They are my own personal blood ties, and they mean everything to me. To paraphrase the end of my own novel, Michael Morbius may be cursed, but I am truly blessed.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BRENDAN DENEEN is the author of the award-winning novel The Ninth Circle as well as the horror novel The Chrysalis. He’s also the author of the Night Night Groot picture book series for Marvel and the upcoming Green Arrow: Stranded original middle grade graphic novel for DC. His graphic novel work includes multiple volumes of Flash Gordon, an original Island of Misfit Toys book, a Casper the
Friendly Ghost reboot, Phoenix, Solarman (a reboot of a Marvel/Stan Lee series), and the original graphic novel Scatterbrain. His short stories and essays have been published by St. Martin’s Press, Reader’s Digest Books, 13Thirty Press, and Necro Publications. Brendan has also been working in the publishing industry for two decades, having worked for Scott Rudin Productions, Miramax, Dimension Films, William Morris, and Macmillan, where he was the editor of the New York Times-bestselling Walking Dead series of novels, among dozens of others.
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