This week we’re covering season 2, episode 10 of Spider-Man: The Animated Series – ‘The Immortal Vampire’.
More like the immortal plotline, amirite?
This week we get to see Morbius finally evolve into his true Calamity Jared Form, but only after we cross off every single square on our Morbius bingo cards so many times that it catches fire. Meanwhile, Blade and Det. Lee have a meet-cute, Peter is a dumb-dumb and Whistler shares too much.
After that, we discuss Untold Tales of Spider-Man #2 (1995), which saw the introduction of the little known character of Batwing.
And remember gang, knowing Spider-Man does not make you cool.
Listen on Apple Podcasts here
Spotify here
Stitcher here
Further podcast notes
First up, here are some stills (some of which are ridiculous) from the episode:
Terri Lee pretty much gets air-lifted into this plot, but takes the whole existence of vampires pretty well. After all, it’s hard enough to find a decent man in the city when you’re working long shifts, so you take it where you can.
At certain points, Morbius’ design is pretty damn great. If it wasn’t for his repetitive character, awful accent and two-dimensional motivations he could be great (the irony of calling a character in a Saturday morning cartoon 2-D isn’t lost on me).
Here’s the side of the van mentioned on the podcast, with a ridiculous headline that actually came up in the comics too.
Peter Parker yelling ‘nooo’ at the moon, something which happens quite a lot in Queens given how much of a clusterfuck his life is.
Oh yeah, here’s that romance Terri was looking for. Unfortunately it’s with the angriest half-man on Earth, and he’s married to the job. Also Whistler.
Morbius somehow made it work with Felicia pre-transformation, but as an even more pale-faced weirdo he really doesn’t pull it off. Wish we’d got more of them together when he was in vampo-mode.
Terri Lee, as usual not knowing what the hell is going on. Leading to our episode icon (on the Soundcloud and Spotify episodes) below:
Now for some comic origins!
There weren’t any proper comic allusions this time around, but there is a case of a giant bat in a Spider-Man comic. To look back on that, we’ll have to head back to 1995 for Untold Tales of Spider-Man #2.
In this series, the Kurt Busiek gave Spider-Man a time-out from the Clone Saga to tell some ‘untold’ stories from Peter Parker’s early days as the wallcrawler. It’s a fun series that manages to capture the tone of the early Stan Lee days and his writing style.
In the second issue, the bat monster turns up.
Spidey ends up promising to catch the creature in order to get some good favour from a Senator and the cops in town.
After tracking him down, he finds that the creature (hereby known as Batwing) is actually just a scared child.
He finds the child’s diary, which handily describes the origin of the creature – a lost child who drank toxic water in a cave and was transformed into a creature that’s more terrified of the world than anything else.
Spidey tussles and eventually takes him down, at least for a moment.
The senator is pleased with the capture, but wants Batwing dead – even if he’s just a kid.
Eventually, Spidey can’t deal with the idea of hurting or betraying the child in any way so decides to let him go – even if it means the city hates him again.
Cherry ends up webbed up and stuffed into the garbage, and Spidey commits to being the least appreciated superhero in NYC.
Batwing turned up again a few times throughout this series, most notably in issue 24 – the penultimate issue of the series.
It’s in this one that he’s finally cured, through a mix of a serum Curt Conners made and the power of motherly love.
That’s all for this week, folks. If you missed the last episode – be sure to check it out here.
That '90s Spider-Man Show 