Honourable Mention – Spider-Man (1997 cartoon)

I previously mentioned the Season 2 episodes of Spider-Man and the four vampire related episodes in that season. In 1997, Season 4 aired and there were a pair of episodes that again centred around Morbius the living vampire (Nick Jameson).

The Season was named Partners in Dangers and often the episodes had a lot of clashes because of feelings and relationships – the first vampire episode is called The Awakening. By the time these episodes take place Mary Jane has gone missing and Spider-Man (Christopher Daniel Barnes) is developing an attachment to the Black Cat (Jennifer Hale). What he does not know is the Cat is actually Felicia Hardy.

man-bat found

Felicia was in a relationship with Michael Morbius, before he was turned into a vampire – so you know that is going to have an effect. Beautiful science geek Debra Whitman (Liz Georges) was also in love with Michael and has a grant from the Herbert foundation to try and find his body. She succeeds, finding him in the Man-Bat form he had been turned into and hibernating.

Felicia as the Black Cat

Her goal is to turn him back to human. However, little does she know that the Herbert foundation is a front created by Herbert Landon (David Warner) solely to get her to find Morbius so that Langdon can steal the neogenic secrets locked in his DNA. When Morbius gets free Felicia goes to Whistler (Oliver Muirhead) for a means to end him (or in this case place him in eternal hibernation) – Blade is in Europe. By the end she can’t pull the trigger.

Blade

In the episode The Vampire Queen we see Blade (J D Hall) hunting a female vampire in Europe. She manages to escape but it is clear she is going after Morbius and a pendant she drops reveals that she is Miriam the vampire Queen (Nichelle Nichols) – Blade’s mother.

Cat and the Spider

In the US, Morbius is starving himself as he doesn’t want to hurt anyone and Black Cat is avoiding Spiderman as she is confused in her feelings for the two men. When Miriam gets there she finds Morbius, gains knowledge of the neogenic recombinator and goes after it. She is not starving herself and local cop Lt Terri Lee (Dawnn Lewis) – herself in love with Blade – jumps to the conclusion it is Morbius.

eye mojo

They go after Morbius with a vampire tracker but find Miriam – who has a great line in eye mojo. However Blade rescues her as he wants his mother back and hopes to cure her. She, however, has the recombinator to make a vampire family/army and turn Blade to a full vampire. By the end of the episode the recombinator is destroyed, Blade heads after the fleeing Miriam and Morbius (who is now using Blade’s serum – which, interestingly, only works if you want it to) and Black Cat go after him to help him in his quest. Spider-Man is left alone.

Morbius

So tangled webs of emotions intermingle with action moments. All in all I didn’t find this as satisfying as the episodes from season 2 and find the tangled web a little too soap opera tangled. However, this still had something going for it – just not as much.

The imdb page for The Awakening is here, whilst the imdb page for The vampire Queen is here.