One comic book character that makes the jump to the screen with Morbius is Martine Bancroft. The character made her debut in Amazing Spider-Man #102 in 1971, created by Roy Thomas and Gil Kane, just like Morbius. The Martine that appears on the big screen, played by Adria Arjona, is very different from her original comic book character though.

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Martine’s comic book story is, for better or worse, tied to Michael Morbius. She never truly has a story on her own. Every aspect of her life revolves around him. His secretary and girlfriend in the comics, she’s present when he begins experimenting on himself. She’s one of the few to survive when he transforms as well. Morbius actually debates drinking her blood before diving off the boat they’re on to prevent himself from harming her. When Martine discovers the nature of his experiments through his notes and letters to a fellow scientist, she seeks out that scientist for help - Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four. Martine’s trip to visit the Fantastic Four, however, only leads to more conflict while Sue Storm is left to “calm her down,” and she doesn’t truly help him.

Eventually, Martine is used in a plot by a sorcerer to get to Morbius, and she’s even turned into a living vampire like he is. When Martine is cured, however, that doesn’t sit well with her. After all, she wants to spend eternity with Morbius, so she actively seeks out a traditional vampire to turn her and make her immortal.

The transformation makes her violent and even more obsessed with spending her life with Morbius, and she seeks to turn him into the same type of vampire as her. She stalks him, uses Spider-Man to track him down, and ultimately, fights them both in her efforts to turn Morbius. Morbius ends up staking her through the heart himself. It’s a tragic ending to what could have been a compelling love story if Martine wasn’t written alternately as a damsel in distress and an obsessive stalker.

In the 2022 Morbius movie, Martine isn’t a secretary. Instead, she’s a doctor and scientist working for Horizon Labs alongside Michael Morbius. In fact, it’s clear that she’s just as intelligent as he is and just as invested in helping others. Martine finds and understands his research even though he’s attempted to hide it from her to give her plausible deniability for the more illegal aspects of his work. Martine insists on helping him not because she’s his love interest, but because she believes in the search for a cure to his rare blood disorder.

Martine isn’t even truly confirmed as his love interest until after they develop the “cure” that transforms him into a vampire. Like the comics, Martine is one of the few people to initially survive an encounter with a newly transformed Morbius. Also like the comics, she is used against him. This time, it’s when his former best friend tracks her down and puts her in danger. The difference is that Martine knows what’s happening and initially refuses to play along. Yes, she’s in danger, but she makes the choice to sacrifice herself with the intention of preventing more bloodshed.

When Morbius does find her, fatally wounded as a result of her encounter with “Milo,” she tells him, “make it mean something,” not wanting her death to be in vain. By that point, the two have discovered that the synthetic blood Morbius keeps ingesting isn’t enough to keep him alive, or to keep him at full strength. She knows that her blood would help him be strong enough to stop his former friend.

Like the comics, however, Martine’s story isn’t done when Morbius drains her blood. She ingests some of his blood during the encounter, and she opens her eyes after the audience is led to believe she’s dead, leaving a return for the character possible for a potential sequel, and a return with her as a living vampire like Morbius at that. While there are obvious connections to her comic book counterpart, this version of Martine is a more well-rounded character, focused on science and helping others beyond simply her own love for Morbius. She actively makes choices for herself instead of making Michael Morbius her whole world.

What’s not clear now is whether Morbius will get a sequel from Sony, or even if the character will play a role in Sony’s building Marvel universe. With planned movies for Kraven the Hunter, Madame Web, and more on the way, it’s clear that Sony wants to be able to have an interconnected universe of Marvel characters to play with, but so far, the critics and audience haven’t been as receptive as the studio might have liked. Morbius is sitting at a 16% rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, but a 70% audience score. The divide is pretty wide on those who did and didn’t love it.

If Morbius and Martine get to appear in further Sony installments, some fans might be worried that Martine’s journey on screen could play out in a similar fashion to the comics with her moving from living vampire to traditional vampire. That would open the door to a more supernatural angle for the Sony movies, but it does seem unlikely with Blade coming to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and giving the MCU their own vampire storylines.

The Martine of the movie universe wouldn’t have that single-minded goal of she Morbius spending eternity together, but would want to use her abilities to make a difference. As she urges Michael when she offers up her blood to help him, “make it mean something.” She doesn’t want her death to be for naught, and she wouldn’t want her transformation to be for nothing either. If anything, Martine’s trajectory could see her trying to continue the research into finding a cure for blood-borne illnesses without the vampiric side effects. She and Morbius would certainly make for an interesting anti-hero duo as they worked to save people and still retain their humanity.

Morbius is currently playing in theaters.

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