Blade comics: Encyclopedia - Blade comics

Blade (comics)

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Blade, the Vampire Slayer

The character Blade was created in 1973 for Marvel Comics by writer Marv Wolfman and artist Gene Colan and was a supporting character in the 1970s comic Tomb of Dracula. The 1998 movie Blade featured some of the characters of the comic book and starred Wesley Snipes; two sequels have followed so far.

Blade comics - Comic book

The man called Blade was born into the darker side of reality in a whorehouse in Brooklyn, off Coney Island, in 1929.

Blade’s mother, a prostitute at Madame Vanity’s brothel, experienced severe labor complications, and a doctor was summoned. The name of the “doctor” was Deacon Frost, in reality a bloodthirsty vampire. Frost feasted on Blade’s mother during his birth, and accidentally passed along certain enzymes in his own blood to the infant, which later resulted in Blade’s immunity to being turned; his ability to “smell” supernatural creatures; a greatly prolonged lifespan; and sensitivity to bright light.

Frost was driven off before he could kill the infant as well by his mother’s coworkers, who raised him until he was nine years old. Then he met Jamal Afari.

Blade comics - Hunter’s Teachings

Walking home from school, Blade saw an old man being attacked by three hoodlums. Blade fought off the hoodlums, who turned out to be vampires, and rescued the old man, who said his name was Jamal Afari. Afari was a jazz trumpeter and a vampire hunter.

Afari moved into Madame Vanity’s brothel, and trained the young Blade in both music and combat. Blade was soon able to defeat many of the weak, younger vampires he and Afari found in abundance in Brooklyn alone.

But Blade’s victories made him cocky. He soon joined a street gang, the Bloodshadows, who were fronting for a much older and more powerful vampire than any Blade had experienced before: Lamia. Blade barely defeated Lamia, and lost his girlfriend Glory, which caused him to not only accept his destiny as an enemy of the undead, but swear to it forever.

Afari himself later fell prey to the attack of the vampire Dracula, the first move in an ongoing battle between him and Blade. Blade killed Afari, and followed Dracula back to Europe.

Blade tracked Dracula throughout Europe, Asia Minor, and on into the far east, staking him many times, but never completely destroying him. In China, Blade joined Ogun Strong’s vampire hunters (Azu, Orji, Musenda, and Ogun himself). Together, they staked Dracula again; however, Dracula revived, and taught Blade an abject lesson by killing all of his new-found friends.

Consumed by grief, Blade resumed his quest alone. It was decades before he again allowed himself to endanger another human.

Blade comics - The Drac Pack

Blade eventually located Dracula in Paris, where he first encountered Quincy Harker and his vampire hunters, the Drac Pack. Blade had heard of Harker before, but had never met him before.

Due to his mercurial temperament, Blade had a strained but steady relationship with Quincy Harker, Rachel Van Helsing,Taj Nital, and Frank Drake, vampire hunters dedicated to destroying Dracula. Blade never joined the Drac Pack, but served as their ally on several occasions.

After an unsuccessful battle with Dracula, Blade realized for the first time that he was immune to turning from a vampire's bite. Armed with this knowledge, he left the Drac Pack and began a quest to find the vampire that killed his mother and avenge her.

Blade was framed by the Legion of the Damned, and cleared his name with the help of

Blade hunt for his mother's killer next led him to Boston, where he again encountered the Drac Pack and their new ally: Dracula. Blade spurned the alliance and berated Harker for it until he faced Doctor Sun, the common threat that drove these natural enemies together. During the battle with Sun, Blade met up with one of Sun's allies, whose face provoked a strange reaction in him, dredging up long-buried memories. The vampire escaped, and Blade again abandoned the Drac Pack, and set out on his own.

Blade eventually encountered Hannibal King, a private detective who had been turned into a vampire by Deacon Frost thirty years ago; however, to further gain Blade's trust, King lied about his age, saying it was only five. While initially distrusting King, Blade teamed up with him to track down Frost.

Blade and King fought together against an evil doppleganger of Blade (created when Frost killed his mother), who absorbed the real Blade. King enlisted the help of Daimon Hellstrom, the so-called Son of Satan, who exorcised Blade from his doppleganger and killed it off with King's help.

Blade and King eventually caught up with Frost who had created an army of vampiric dopplegangers, one for each of his victims. Together, they shut down Frost for good, forging a lasting friendship.

Blade comics - The Nightstalkers

In later years, Blade, along with King and Drake, became a frequent ally of Doctor Strange and assisted in the casting of the Montesi formula, which destroyed Dracula and, for a time, all vampires on Earth. Blade, King and Drake stayed together, and formed a private detective agency called Borderline Inc. The agency discontinued after Drake left and Blade was committed to a psychiatric hospital following a battle with a temporarily resurrected Dracula. Image:Bladesword.jpg Doctor Strange later arranged the release of Blade so that he could join Drake and King in reforming Borderline Inc. as the Nightstalkers, members of Strange's new team: the Midnight Sons, at the core of which stood the Nine, humans (and otherwise) chosen to defend Earth against mystical invasion. Together, unknowingly under Strange's manipulation, they battled various supernatural villains such as the Darkholders, Hydra's DOA, the Lilin (the children of Lilith, mother of demons), and Varnae, the Lord of Vampires. One thing Strange did to ensure the cooperation of Blade and the others was to mystically transmute Blade's hatred of vampire's into an enmity against all things supernatural. But, even more dangerous games were afoot. Due to its gross over-use, the Montesi formula was weakening: King transformed back into a vampire, and Blade's vampiric DNA resurfaced, making him even more volatile and dangerous...and playing him and King against each other. Blade even tried to sacrifice King to the DOA. It was only through Frank Drake's insistance that Blade decided to save his former friend.

At one point, Blade even used a page of the accursed Darkhold Book of spells to become mystically empowered; in truth, his body was taken over by an ancient entity bent on the destruction of the supernatural world called the Demogorge. In this form Blade fought and slew many of the Midnight Sons, and was only stopped when one of them read a spell of banishment and exiled the Demogorge forever.

The damage he had done as Switchblade was reversed; however, Blade could not reconcile himself to the fact that he remembered everything that had occured, and that he had caused it all through his blind hatred of the supernatural. Using a mystical knife called the Edge of Intrados, Blade reviewed his life as though living it again. This was a major turning point in his life: he realized that, even before Strange's manipulations, he had been governed by his own obsessions and blinded to the safety and well-being of his friends and allies, or the possibility of leading a normal life. He decided to retire.

He was soon pressured into returning to the game, however, when Drake and King were kidnapped by Shortcircuit, one of the Lilin. Blade followed them into an alternate reality were King had become the Lord of Vampires. Escaping from this living nightmare, Blade killed Shortcircuit, and swore to King that he would never allow King to lose control of his vampiric urges, sealing the rift between them and cementing their friendship forever.

But tragedy soon struck. Blade was devastated when he appeared to be the only one of the trio to survive the final battle with Varnae, which culminated in the death of Blade's old friend and the only one of the Drac Pack who he could ever connect to: Taj Nital, now a vampire serving Varnae. With every member of the Drac Pack now gone, Blade decided to return to vampire hunting, to honor their memory. He would go on to encounter a vampire impersonating Deacon Frost and finally a once again resurrected Dracula. Later, in New Orleans, Blade discovered that Hannibal King survived the encounter with Varnae and the two joined forces to defeat a newly resurrected Deacon Frost.

Blade comics - Daywalker

Blade remained active in New Orleans, defeating the vampire Ulysses Sojourner and his own former ally, Morbius, who was under Sojourner's mental thrall. Blade followed Morbius (himself a former member of both the Midnight Sons and the Nine) back to New York, where, while teamed with Spider-Man, Blade was bitten by Morbius.

Blade's blood enzymes reacted unexpectedly with Morbius's unique form of vampirism to produce an almost perfected form of the virus, granting Blade many vampire strengths while eliminating weaknesses inherent to a vampire (it was at this time that Blade assumed the unofficial title of "Daywalker" among his prey).

Recently, Blade has come under the eye of the S.H.I.E.L.D division Project: Silvereye, which sought to use his blood in creating cloned vampire operatives. Blade shut down the project with the help of two vampire-hunting twins, Mosha and Mikado. Blade was then forced to combat a hostile takeover of the vampire world by a breed of vampire called the Tryks while simultaneously repelling the advances of their queen.

Blade's last known adventure involved a plot by Dracula to assume the title of Vampire Lord officially, by becoming a god-like being like Varnae. Blade joined Noah Van Helsing (actually Noah Tremayne, Rachel's adopted cousin) and several vampire hunters from across the globe to stop Dracula from suceeding.

Blade has since encountered the Punisher and had adventures with the Black Panther. He remains active in New Orleans, and around the world.

Blade comics - Movies

Main article: Blade (movie) Image:Bladepose.JPG In 1998, the movie Blade starred Wesley Snipes as Blade, Kris Kristofferson as Whistler, Blade's Mentor, and Stephen Dorff as Deacon Frost. It was written by David Goyer and directed by Stephen Norrington. While not an exact adaptation of any of the comic stories, it was faithful to the character and situations created by Wolfman and Colan. Unlike in the comic, Blade's half-vampire nature was very much apparent and he was constantly at odds with it. Deacon Frost was depicted as a much younger, more 1990s character than his comic book counterpart. It was followed in 2002 by Blade II (written by Goyer and directed by Guillermo del Toro) and concluded in 2004 with Blade: Trinity (written and directed by Goyer) which introduced Hannibal King (Ryan Reynolds) and the Nightstalkers.

Blade comics - Blade TV Show

Image:Blade.jpg A Blade television series is currently filming in Vancouver and is slated to premiere on Spike TV in 2006. The 2-hour pilot for the show is being directed by Peter O'Fallon from a script written by David Goyer and Geoff Johns; and will star rapper/actor Sticky Fingaz as Blade. Other stars include Jill Wagner, Neil Jackson, Jessica Gower and Nelson Lee as Blade's ally, Shen. It is supposedly set to take place following the events of Blade: Trinity and will not feature Hannibal King or Abagail Whistler.

Categories: Fictional vampires | Marvel Comics superheroes | Marvel Comics titles | Vampires in written fiction | Black superheroes

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