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Spider-Man VS Blade Spider-Man
vs the Monsters
Marvel Team-Up # 7 the second
series features a short combat between Spider-Man and Blade. A
misunderstanding about over an undead monster and whether it's good to put
him in prison where he can create more undead puts Blade and Spider-Man on
opposite sides. Before it's over Blade ends up saving Spider-Man's neck.
Blade Comic Book History
Blade stood out amongst other comic heroes with his direct and at times,
rude, way of speaking. His dialogue was also intended to reflect, to
varying degrees of success, the street slang of the 1970s.
While the Marvel Comics version of Blade was a British citizen born in
London, the film and television versions of Blade produced by New Line
Cinema, are both American citizens born in Detroit.
Aside from the detail that their mothers were bitten by vampires while
giving birth to them, there was little semblance between the movie and
comic book version of Blade. However, due to the success of the film,
efforts were made by Marvel to make the comic version resemble the film
character more closely. This was achieved by having Blade bitten on the
arm by Morbius. The injury resulted in Blade
becoming a half vampire, which gave him all of a vampire's strengths but
none of their weaknesses. He had super strength, great agility, and
immunity to sunlight. Prior to being bitten by Morbius the only unusual
attributes Blade was said to have were an immunity to vampire bites and a
retarded aging process. Both due to his unique physiology. As Morbius was
not a true vampire, but some type of variant, Blade was not immune to his
bite like other vampires and it altered his physiology to the extent that
it was similar to that of Morbius.
Blade's birthdate was October 24, 1929
- also known as Black Thursday ; as it was the day the stock market crash
began. Although an old man, his vampire powers make him look much
younger. Blade's mother, Tara; 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 Blade's birth, killing her, and
accidentally passing along certain enzymes in his own blood to the infant.
This resulted in Blade's superhuman abilities, such as immunity to being
turned, ability to "smell" supernatural creatures, and greatly prolonged
lifespan. This also caused Blade's sensitivity to bright light.
Frost was driven off by Blade's mother’s coworkers before he could kill
the infant as well. They raised him until he was nine years old. Though he
lacked superhuman physical prowess, he trained himself to become an
Olympic-level athlete and formidable hand-to-hand combatant. Most notably,
he became an expert with edged weapons and especially knives and daggers.
Hunter
Marvel Preview #3, by Gray MorrowWalking home from school, Blade saw an
old man being attacked by three bandits. Blade fought off the hoodlums,
who turned out to be vampires, and rescued the old man. He learned that
the old man was Jamal Afari, jazz trumpeter and 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 that he and Afari found in abundance.
However, Blade's victories made him cocky. He soon joined a street gang,
the Bloodshadows, which was headed by a much older and more powerful
vampire than any Blade had met before: Lamia. Blade barely defeated Lamia,
and, in doing so, lost his girlfriend Glory, a loss which caused him not
only to accept his destiny as an enemy of the undead, but also to swear to
it forever.
Afari himself later fell prey to the attack of the vampire Dracula, the
first occurrence in an ongoing battle between him and Blade. Blade slew
the vampire Afari and followed Dracula back to Europe.
Blade tracked Dracula throughout Europe and Asia Minor, then on into the
far east, staking him many times, but never completely destroying him. In
China, Blade joined Ogun Strong's vampire hunters which included Azu, Orji
and Musenda. Together, they staked Dracula again. Once more, Dracula
survived, and taught Blade an object lesson by killing all of his
new-found friends except Musenda (who eventually retired from vampire
hunting). However, Orji created a lasting impression on Blade with his use
of wooden daggers as a means to combat vampires. Sometime after Orji's
death, Blade mastered the use of daggers and adopted the use of wooden
daggers as his preferred method of combating vampires.
Consumed by grief, Blade resumed his quest alone. It was decades before he
again allowed himself to endanger another human.
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. Because of 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's 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 Blade's evil doppelganger (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 doppelganger and killed it with King's help. Blade and King
eventually caught up with Frost who had created an army of vampiric
doppelgangers, one for each of his victims. Together, they shut down Frost
for good, forging a lasting friendship.
The Nightstalkers
Nightstalkers #3, by Ron GarneyIn later years, Blade, along with King and
Drake, became a frequent ally of Doctor Strange and assisted in the
casting of the Montesi Formula. The formula had been retrieved from a page
in the Darkhold a powerful book of magic responsible for the creatiion of
all vampires. This 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.
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 others 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.
To ensure Blade's cooperation, Strange mystically transmuted Blade's
hatred of vampires 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 insistence
that Blade decided to save his former friend.
At one point, Blade used a page of the accursed Darkhold book of spells to
become, apparently, the mystically empowered Switchblade. 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
occurred, 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 where 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.
The Midnight Sons were soon after involved in the events known as the
Siege of Darkness. In the culminating chapter of this adventure, Blade
obtained the mystical sword Justicar from Foundry, a former member of both
the Blood and the Fallen, immortal enemies and servants of Zarathos,
respectively.
Foundry had never completed the forging of Justicar because it needed to
be tempered in Blood. Not blood - Blood. However, when Zarathos and the
Fallen attacked, Foundry allowed Blade to kill her, completing the sword.
Blade proceeded to kill each and every member of the Fallen, and to
seemingly destroy Zarathos.
After the Siege of Darkness, the Midnight Sons began to drift apart, as
their destiny as a team seemed fulfilled. Blade and the Nightstalkers
continued to hunt vampires, believing that it was partially their fault
(through their lack of understanding about how to properly use the Montesi
Formula) that vampires were being reintroduced into the human world.
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 he was ever able to connect with: 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 join
forces with a mystic named Bible John Carrik, and to encounter a vampire
impersonating Deacon Frost and finally a once again resurrected Dracula.
Later, in New Orleans, Blade discovered that Hannibal King had survived
the encounter with Varnae, and the two joined forces to defeat a newly
resurrected Deacon Frost.
Daywalker Morbius attacks!
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[3], 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.
One of Blade's recent solo adventures 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 succeeding.
Blade has since encountered the Punisher and has taken up protecting a
Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans from an escalating vampire
population, most notably alongside Luke Cage, Brother Voodoo, and the
Black Panther. A short time later, Blade was also invited to attend the
wedding of the Black Panther and Storm in Africa.
Return to Mainstream Marvel
Blade was given a monthly title of his own again. He was contacted by
SHIELD's splinter group, the Howling Commando's, to deal with an old
adversary. Also, the secret Order of Tyrana appeared to keep files on
Blade's life.
Dracula had arisen from his grave once again, and transformed an entire
class of school kids into vampires... a class the webslinger Spider-Man
happened to be teaching. Spider-Man also fell under Draucla's influence
and was turned into a vampire as well. Blade and the webslinger fought
each other, and Blade revealed he was a big fan of Parker. Spider-Man's
radioactive blood eventually turned him back to normal, and the kids got
turned back as well. During the upcoming battle, Blade managed to kill
Dracula once again, but the remains of Dracula's body got transported to
SHIELD's flying headquarters, something Blade found immediately
suspicious. He infiltrated in the Helicarrier, and while wearing a SHIELD
uniform, Blade fought some vampires who made everyone else believe they
were SHIELD agents. Blade had realized these vampires wanted to revive
Dracula once again, but intervened. Blade managed to succesfully kill all
of these vampires and fully destroyed Dracula's body with silver bullets.
Meanwhile, without Blade's knowledge, his rich father; Lucas Cross; was
revealed to be the one responsible for reviving Dracula and wasn't
impressed to hear his son was behind Dracula's demise
Media History
Blade was created in 1973 for Marvel Comics by writer Marv Wolfman and
artist Gene Colan. Originally, Blade 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. A Blade television
series on Spike TV has now finished its first season, but according
to reports has now been canceled. A new ongoing comic started in September
2006.
Ultimate Blade
Blade made his first appearance in the Ultimate Marvel Universe in the
Ultimate Spider-Man Super Special One-shot. His appearance was limited,
but he was still hunting vampires and was, himself, part vampire. This
encounter was later re-told in different settings in Ultimate Spider-Man
#95.
Spider-Man the Animated Series Blade
Animated BladeBlade appears in a 1996 episode of the Spider-Man animated
series, entitled "Neogenic Nightmare: Chapter 9: Blade the Vampire
Hunter." In that episode, Spider-Man and Blade first met each other, and
it also marked the very first appearance of Whistler in the Marvel
Universe, as Whistler never appeared in a comic before. In this episode,
Blade was hunting down Morbius. It was also revealed that Blade was the
son of a vampire man with a human mother, but became orphaned after his
mother left him in a foster home after she was bitten by a vampire. In the
following episode "The Immortal Vampire", Blade once again makes an
appearance alongside Morbius. In the shows 4th season, in the episode
"Partners in Danger: Chapter 7: The Vampire Queen", Blade returns and
hunts down the Vampire Queen, who is revealed to be his mother. Blade made
his final appearance in the show in the 5th season episode "Secret Wars:
Chapter 2: Gauntlet of the Red Skull" where he was seen working side by
side with Morbius and the Black Cat against the Vampire Queen until the
Cat got "abducted" by Spider-Man to help him. Blade was voiced by J.D.
Hall.
Comic Book Appearances
Tomb of Dracula #10 (first appearance)
Tomb of Dracula #13 (helps Quincy Harker track down Dracula)
Tomb of Dracula #14 (kills Dracula for the first time)
Tomb of Dracula #15 (Dracula revived)
Tomb of Dracula #18-19
Fear v1 #24 (Blade meets Morbius)
Tomb of Dracula #30 (meets Ogun, Azu, Musenda & Orji)
Tomb of Dracula #41-44 (with Dr. Strange, meets Hannibal King)
Tomb of Dracula #45 (vs. Hannibal King)
Tomb of Dracula #48, 51 (vs Dracula)
Tomb of Dracula #53 (fury of Deacon Frost)
Tomb of Dracula #58 (alone against Dracula)
Dr. Strange v1. #61-62 (October 1983, Dr. Strange team-up vs. Dracula)
Vampire Tales #8-9
Blade: Crescent City Blues (one-shot)
Ghost Rider v2 #28 (August 1992, revealed as future member of Midnight
Sons)
Nightstalkers v1 #1 (November 1993, rise of the Midnight Sons)
Nightstalkers v1 #10 (August 1993, team-up with Johnny Blaze)
Ghost Rider v2 #40 (vs. Demogoblin)
Midnight Sons Unlimited #4,8
Darkhold v1 #11 (August 1993, Midnight Massacre)
Morbius: The Living Vampire v1 #12 (August 1993, meets Werewolf Jack
Russel)
Ghost Rider: Spirits of Vengeance v1 #13 (August 1993)
Nightstalkers v1 #18 (April 1994, Dr. Strange team-up)
Blade: The Vampire Hunter #1-10 (July 1994 series)
Blade: Sins of the Father (1998 one-shot)
Marvel Team-Up v2 #7 (1998, Blade & Spider-Man team-up)
Blade #1/2 (Wizard one-shot; team-up with Mikado & Bloodsbane)
Blade v1 #1-4 (1999 series)
Gambit v3 #4 (1999, team-up with Gambit)
Peter Parker: Spider-Man v1 #7 (July 1999, Spider-Man team-up)
Blade: Vampire Hunter #1-6 (2000 series)
Blade v2 #1-6 (2002, Max series)
Blade: Nightstalking (2004 comic available with Blade: Trinity DVD)
Tomb of Dracula (v2) #1-4 (2004 series, teams up with vampire hunters
against Dracula)
Marvel Team-Up v3 #8 (2005, Blade & Punisher team-up)
Black Panther v4 #12-13 (2006, team-up with Black Panther, Brother Voodoo
& Luke Cage)
Black Panther v4 #18 (2006, guest at BP's & Storm's wedding)
Blade v3 #1- (November 2006; ongoing)
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