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What do they do if they found a lost child?
TAS: is nervous, looks around for the adult who was with the child, when he can’t find them then he tries to engage with the child. Depending on how upset the child is he would speak softly (At a certain volumes kids either find his accent silly or intimidating) or try to cheer them up with a silly face (he knows he looks weird and is banking on the kid not being off put by him if he casts the weirdness in a silly light) to gain their trust before asking what’s wrong. If he can get a description of the adult they were with, or maybe directions to someplace the child feels safe, he would scoop them up (holds little kids close to him, or lets the more adventurous ride on his shoulders) and fly them to that person/place. Once he finds it/them, he will set the child down a little ways away ( if a person) or on the doorstep (if a place) and then watch from afar until he knows that they’re safe. Then he breathes a sigh of relief and gets the heck out of dodge.
Ultimate: upon noticing an unaccompanied child, contemplates having a free snack. Ehh, there’s not much life force in something so small and the aftermath would be too much of a hassle, so he’ll keep on walking. He’d walk right past the distressed child, look directly into their little tear stained face, and keep walking. He’d continue walking away until what little sympathy he has finally starts to gnaw at him. He’ll stop, consider his options, and then find a payphone (of course he has his own work phone, but he isn’t going to use that to call the cops). He’d give 911 a brief anonymous description of what he saw and where he saw it, and then leave. Whatever happens next isn’t his problem anymore.
616: would be out on a late night run to the blood bank and already hangry. Spotting a lone child would definitely tip off his Prey drive, making him tense up and watch the child closely. Intently. Hungrily… until something breaks his line of sight on the child and he snaps out of it. Ashamed of what he was doing, he’d crawl up a building trying to put as much distance between him and the child as he can. And then he’d sit up there for a moment, all full of self loathing, until he really thinks about what he saw. There is a child in need down there, and they are all alone. There are absolutely worse things than him out here tonight, so he’d circle back to where he saw the child. He’d Panic a bit until he could see them, and then start to think of a way to get help for them without going down there (feels like he can’t trust himself with the child and also doesn’t want to frighten them). Ends up spending the whole night keeping an eye on the child from afar as they wander around until he can flag down a superhero (he’s hoping for dr.strange or daredevil, just anyone but Spider-Man; spidey doesn’t always hear him out, and usually ends up beating the shit out of him). No one ever comes their way, and he never does complete his blood-run, but at least he keeps the child safe until morning when they are found asleep by a police officer.
Blood ties: steps out one night to look for a drink while Amanda is asleep, doesn’t plan on being out for very long (hasn’t confided in Amanda yet, he doesn’t really want to scare her). He barely gets 10 feet away from where they’re staying before he finds an unattended child wandering around. The area is rough and seedy, so he has no illusions about what could happen to a child all alone. He decides to stuff his hunger deep down deep and try approaching the child as non threateningly as possible… it doesn’t really work well. In fact he ends up scaring the child into the path of something even worse than him. He manages to get the child away from the threat, but they have to make a run for it. He scoops up the child and flees back to where he and Amanda are staying, unfortunately bringing the threat with them. He has to wake her up to take care of the child while he goes back out to brutally beat the shit out of the bad guy/monster (hopefully where the kid won’t see it). In the morning Amanda takes the child to the police station while Michael gets some rest (she’s so going to chew him out later, though).
Midnight Son: is out on a mission with some teammates (maybe captain America and blade?, any combo really) When he thinks he hears something in a suspicious pile of rubble. He checks the deck, there’s an Echolocation card available, which he uses to find a child hiding from bad guys underneath. He knows that he’s not the best with children, but he can’t seem to pull any of his teammates’ cards to ask for a teamup. Guess this means he has to help the child himself. He tries moving the rubble With a Claw card, but that just makes the debris unstable. Judging from the outside he figures he might fit underneath if he had Mist Form in his hand… unfortunately a quick glance shows that he currently doesn’t have one of those ready to play. Honestly it’s so frustrating when you don’t have the right cards available! It wouldn’t be such a problem if he could just get the child to come out on their own, right? Unfortunately, he can tell that they’re scared; and of course, why shouldn’t they be? There are demons and hydra soldiers and vampires out here, all things that little children should definitely be afraid of. So the question is, how can he coax the child into coming out? A quick look at his hand provides the answer: a Charm card is playable. One use and the child timidly shimmies their own way out from their hiding spot, just in time for the rubble finally collapses inward. Together they look at it in stunned silence. The child clings tightly to him as he takes them back to the drop off area where he started the mission. Thankfully his teammates are already waiting for them; they must have finished the mission without him. However, upon hearing what happened, they both agree that he did the right thing by sticking back to help the child. Together they take the child back to the abbey for the night. In the morning they’ll get the authorities involved, but for now this child is going to meet all the superheroes they could ever dream of!
Movie: He finds a child all by themself on the street at night and they’re already crying their eyes out. After checking to see if there’s any adults nearby looking for them, he steps in to try and calm them down. Peekaboo doesn’t work (the kid is scared of his face trick), jokes don’t work (the kid is too young for Morbin’ Time jokes, which aren’t really that funny when he thinks about it), and in fact none of his usual bedside tricks seem to do the job. But there is still one thing he could try: very softly, he starts to sing. The waterworks immediately dry up to just a sniffle. Unfortunately, whenever he stops singing they start to tear up again, so he can’t really ask them any questions. It’s fine though, the child is pacified enough that he can look for a safe place to bring them on his own. He just hopes doesn’t run out of songs before that happens.
Empathy is a bitch
I just realized that, although I love the 2012 Dark Shadows movie, for some people that movie is their 2021 Morbius.
Reasons I like it: It’s Johnny Depp, in a vampire movie, set in the late 60s early 70s, with all the music and Johnny Depp-ing around that that would entail…
But I get what a fan of the Original Dark Shadows would see: that’s not Barnabas Collins, this tone is too cheerful, they truncated whole arcs, and some characters are missing or smooshed together!
Because that’s kind of how I feel about the Morbius movie: that’s not Michael Morbius, they’ve smooshed three different characters into one worse version of an important one, why does this taste like a diet version of the 90s comic? What is this tone?
But someone probably says: yes! Jared Leto is Jared Leto-big all over the place, and I love that Milo guy, I’d like to ship him and Michael, and ooo! Cool special effects! Boy, what a fun early 2000s comic book movie!
And I cringed, just like those poor Dark Shadows fans did. However, 3 years out from my worst ever experience with the cinema, I can’t completely find it in my heart to hate movie-character Morbius anymore. In the grand multiversal scheme of things he’s just another version of my favorite character, and he did nothing wrong but exist in a shitty movie. And I hope the Dark shadows fans eventually realized this about movie-character Barnabus too. He might not be your favorite version of the guy, but he’s still that guy. And he might become someone’s favorite.
I just thought I’d point this out because sometime in the next decade or so, they will do this again to someone else’s favorite vampire blorbo. I just know that Hollywood will. So I hope that when they do, both fandoms will there to commiserate with the new guys. Because it sucks to see your blorbos done out of character in an adaptation that overshadows their original portrayal.
But just know that that shitty adaptation will make more people interested in that character, and hopefully, they will eventually watch/read the original versions. And then you’ll have new friends!
Hey, you know how the Zelda community has, like, Linked Universe and Multiversal Links AUs?
Well, I propose a little offshoot of the marvel multiverse and spiderverse just for Morbius; As a treat! Like, there are enough distinct multimedia versions of him that it would be funny to set them all down in the same room.
Like for Tv/Cartoons you have TAS Morbius and Ultimate Spider-Man Morbius: you get both because they are very different characters, TAS being possibly the youngest version of Michael, and Ultimate being the most cowardly and closest to a villain.
For video games you would have Midnight Suns Morbius: I know that’s not the only video game version of him, but he’s the most fleshed out version of Michael in gaming.
In print media you can possibly have two of them: post 2013 616 Comic book Morbius (who has the sick from a young age background) and Book Morbius from that novel (he ties best into the 70s and magazine continuity of getting sick later in life)
And, of course, you have to have Movie version Morbius: like it or not, in universe, he is just another version of Michael, he doesn’t know how horribly written or acted he is! He deserves just as much sympathy as any other version. Plus, it could be very funny if he’s the meta one. like, because of how much Leto is bleeding out of that performance, he can see the fourth wall while in a multiversal setting. And he is deeply aware and ashamed by what he can see!
And well, as far as what they’d all do once together? I don’t know 🤷, what do Multimedia Morbs do? Look for a cure together? Compare love interests? Try to save Nikos from the timeline? Raise an infant B-Negative?
It would be up to us, Morbutauls