Blade
Created by Marv Wolfman

Blade's what you might call an obscure comic hero. Before the 1998 Wesley Snipes/Stephen Dorff action-packed drool-fest, it was a privileged few who knew much about this warrior against the darkness and his Monkey Magic-style sword and knife play. This angst-ridden, vengeance-driven, stake-heart vampire hunter of the firm-policy-on-not-dating-them school.

I'd never heard of him.

But, like Howard the Duck, Spawn and The Crow before him, he has become a fast 2-D favourite o' mine post the big screen, if for no other reason than that, like all of the aforementioned, he is as unusual a comic-book hero as inhumanly possible. Plus, he killed Dracula one time, and you've gotta love anyone who can do that. (Unless there're bad English accents involved, of course.)

Blade began life just as his mother ended it, bitten by a vampire. The bite made Blade (the name by which he, clearly, prefers to be known... I'm now considering "Spatula" for myself) immune to vampire bites -- not that he can't be bitten and bleed to death, 'cause that's a whole other power, just that he can't be "turned." Of course, in the film version of Blade he is a "half-vampire," with all the super-strength, blood-lust and affinity for wearing black that such implies, but let us chalk that up to a "hey, I thought Lex was supposed to be bald!" movie-thing.

All kinds of exciting things have happened with Blade throughout the course of his in-print life. Debuting during the great Marvel monster-book experiment of the 70's, in the pages of Tomb of Dracula, he has since been found in milieus including Nightstalkers, Ghost Rider, and Peter Parker: Spider-Man. Plus, obviously, Blade: The Vampire Hunter -- funny about that. However, it is in his bit-part roles, as the mysterious, stoical, vampicidal madman that he shines most, and that is why I get so very excited every time I discover a number of a comic in which he is featured. Last week I found him in an old Adventure Into Fear issue. I was so effusive about it, I daren't show my face in that comic shop ever again.

The two main thorns in Blade's side, Deacon Frost and Dracula, were always his main obsession. Deacon Frost bit his mother as she gave birth to him -- thus bestowing upon him his immunity -- and Dracula bit his surrogate-father, turning him into a vamp. Being all about revenge, Blade has since teamed up with various evil exterminators to make the two of them pay, and pay dearly. Although his killing of Dracula wasn't entirely successful, in that the Master (-bater) was later resurrected, Blade did manage to kill the distinctly non-Dorff-looking Frost (grey-haired and bearded -- sometimes filmic license is a beautiful thing), once and for all, kind of leaving him a vampire hunter without a vampire to hunt.

Which is why you should all stop wishing for Magneto to be defeated, for Kingpin to be crushed, for the Green Glider to run out of descendants, for God's sake. 'Cause you defeat a guy's ultimate nemesis, and that's kind of the end of the road for him.

I wanna see Blade back in action, dammit. I wanna see him be cool, and wooden-knife wielding, and not as out-of-place as he was in his recent Peter Parker: Spider-Man appearance, going up against a vampire I could have taken out, if given sufficient doses of steroids and/or Dutch courage before hand. I'd like to see a new Blade title, with a new foe, some old friends -- including the return of Rachel van Helsing; I really liked that chick -- and a bunch of great vampy story-telling and art along with them.

And if we could get a Buffy cameo in there -- at the AGM of the Vampire Slayers Union, or something -- that wouldn't be too bad either. They could compare Dracula-killing notes. And fashion tips. 'Cause there's no way Blade would have gone up against the Count wearing pink leather pants.

Though it does make for an interesting image... and a second, sadly Dorff-less Blade movie is in production. Ah, I can see it now. Mr. Snipes to Wardrobe, please.

-- Rachel Hyland

Blade: The Vampire Hunter, published by Marvel Comics, is currently available only in back issues through comic retailers.

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