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Have you ever had that moment when you read through a Marvel/DC comic and suddenly realize, "Wow, comics are weird"?

I recently had that realization when researching an obscure Marvel villain, Sauron.

As in, dinosaur. Except he did in fact canonically get his name from Tolkien's iconic villain.

What really fascinates me is the story of his creation. Back when Sauron was conceptualized in 1969, the Comics Code forbade depictions of vampires. And so, to get past the law, artist Neal Adams and writer Roy Thomas sat down, looked each other in the eyes, and came to the obvious solution: make a dinosaur vampire.

Karl Lykos was a normal human until he was bitten by pterodactyls from the Savage Land (long story). He then gets the power to absorb the life force from other people, and doing so transforms him into a pterodactyl. He also, as you see above, has glowing red eyes that can hypnotize people.

That, my friends, is why we have a villain who would rather turn people into dinosaurs than cure cancer.

As far as I am concerned, he would have made for a much better vampire protagonist than Morbius.

Description

Have you ever had that moment when you read through a Marvel/DC comic and suddenly realize, "Wow, comics are weird"?

I recently had that realization when researching an obscure Marvel villain, Sauron.

As in, dinosaur. Except he did in fact canonically get his name from Tolkien's iconic villain.

What really fascinates me is the story of his creation. Back when Sauron was conceptualized in 1969, the Comics Code forbade depictions of vampires. And so, to get past the law, artist Neal Adams and writer Roy Thomas sat down, looked each other in the eyes, and came to the obvious solution: make a dinosaur vampire.

Karl Lykos was a normal human until he was bitten by pterodactyls from the Savage Land (long story). He then gets the power to absorb the life force from other people, and doing so transforms him into a pterodactyl. He also, as you see above, has glowing red eyes that can hypnotize people.

That, my friends, is why we have a villain who would rather turn people into dinosaurs than cure cancer.

As far as I am concerned, he would have made for a much better vampire protagonist than Morbius.