First Appearance of Morbius: Amazing Spider-Man #101 Value

Morbius first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #101, cover-dated October 1971, created by writer Roy Thomas and artist Gil Kane (Wikipedia). The timing was not an accident: the Comics Code Authority had lifted its ban on vampire stories in February 1971. Thomas has said the first idea was Dracula, but Stan Lee wanted a costumed villain, so Morbius was built as a scientist rather than a supernatural monster.

Michael Morbius is a biochemist with a rare blood disease. He tried to cure himself with experimental chemicals, electroshock therapy and genetic samples from vampire bats, and the treatment turned him into a pseudo-vampire: a scientifically mutated living man, not an undead creature (Wikipedia). He needs blood, but he was never dead, which is what the "living" in his title means.

PriceCharting values retrieved September 25, 2026:

• Ungraded: $196.78 (about one sale a day)
• Graded 4.0: $187.00
• Graded 6.0: $290.11
• Graded 8.0: $690.09 (about one sale a week)
• Graded 9.2: $1,401.73 (about four sales a year)
• Graded 9.8: $11,590.00 (about one sale a year)

Two things to note. A 4.0 slab lists below the average ungraded sale, so grading a low-grade copy adds little. At the top, 9.8 is about eight times 9.2, and that figure rests on roughly one sale a year, so a single auction can move it a lot.

She became one, more than once. His fiancée Martine Bancroft appears in his origin story. Wikipedia says she was later infected by his bite and became a pseudo-vampire before being cured; she was then resurrected as a true undead vampire, and Morbius killed her in The Amazing Spider-Man #622 (2010).

On film, yes. Sony's Morbius (2022) is part of the same Sony's Spider-Man Universe as the Venom films, and its mid-credits scenes bring in Michael Keaton as Adrian Toomes, the Vulture (Wikipedia). That shared universe is a film arrangement; for Venom's own comic debut, see our Venom page.

Morbius, directed by Daniel Espinosa and starring Jared Leto, opened on April 1, 2022 after several delays from July 2020. It cost $75 to $83 million and grossed $167.5 million worldwide. Wikipedia records a 15% approval score on Rotten Tomatoes, a C+ CinemaScore and a 74% second-weekend drop, which it calls the second-worst ever for a superhero film. Social-media jokes such as "It's Morbin' time" led Sony to re-release it on June 3, 2022; the re-release made $280,000 over the weekend.

Northstar. Wikipedia calls him the first openly gay character to come out in a book published by Marvel: he says "I am gay" in Alpha Flight #106 (1992). He first appeared in The Uncanny X-Men #120 (April 1979), and in Astonishing X-Men #51 (June 2012) he married Kyle Jinadu, which Wikipedia describes as the first same-sex wedding shown in mainstream comics.

• Indicia: the small print on the first page or inside cover gives the title, issue number, date and publisher; reprints and facsimiles say so there.
• Cover price and barcode: a price or barcode that did not exist in the cover year means a later edition.
• Paper: decades-old newsprint tans at the edges; bright white pages on an old date are a warning sign.
• Restoration: color touch, trimmed edges and replaced covers are common on expensive keys; a grading service such as CGC can detect them.

Shoot the front cover flat and straight on in even light, then the indicia and the back cover. The Amazing Spider-Man #101 sells about once a day ungraded, so compare your cover and indicia with the completed-sale photos before you trust any listing's description. ComicLens reads the title, issue number and cover art from the photo, and there are free scans every day.

Research and drafting were assisted by AI and checked line by line against the sources listed on this page. Prices are the figures shown by the named source on the date given; they change with the market, and a grade that trades about once a year can move a lot on a single sale.