Review- Morbius The Living Vampire #6

Morbius The Living Vampire #6 (Marvel, cover date August, 2013)

Writer: Joe Keatinge

Artist: Valentine De Landro

Colorist: Antonio Fabela

I apologize for the tardiness of my review, but I was at Disneyworld in Orlando with my family when this was released last week, and I couldn't find time to hit the comic shop until yesterday. While I'm always late (sometimes years) with my reviews of collected editions, in the single issue comic book review world each day late is like a week late in Internet time.

This is a bit of a letdown after the first arc, with the dreaded “guest star” forced in to help boost lagging sales. If it were Werewolf By Night or the Living Mummy it would Rock; instead, it is the so-called “Superior” Spider-Man. The very notion of (SPOILERS) Doctor Octopus as Spider-Man still pisses me off, and I refuse to buy that title anymore. So being forced to read a story with the inferior Spider-Man annoyed the piss out of me.

So the Rose is trying to build an Ultimate Nullifier? I've never known the Rose to be that level of power player before. I'm not crazy about the developments in this issue, nor am I crazy about De Landro's artwork. It really took me out of the story when compared to Richard Elson's excellent artwork in the previous issues. This wasn't a bad issue as much as it didn't Rock my socks off. There's three issues of Morbius left folks, and I'm in it for the long haul.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 3.5 out of 5.

On a somewhat unrelated note, the new issue of Previews has a Morbius T-shirt available for pre-order. A classic '70s image without the faux overly distressed print = sold. I can't stand distressed screen prints on apparel. It's such fake bullshit. Back when I was a concert shirt wearing young man I wore my shirts until they were threadbare and the image had cracked and flaked through natural wear and tear and love. Nowadays we can't expect our special little snowflakes to wear a shirt long enough to get that beautiful vintage look the hard way, by living it. No, it's better to fake it and buy some lameass distressed fake concert shirt at Target. We manufacture nostalgia.

Like I mentioned above, my family went to Disneyworld for our vacation this year. I walked through umpteen gift shops, and looked at lots of screen printed shirts. I laughed at the ones that were vintage designs with fake distressed prints on them. It basically says I want to be overly nostalgic and reminiscent of the vacation now, not five or ten years from now. So lame.