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Dhampir. Daywalker. Vampire Hunter. The man who goes by Blade has lived a life filled with the blood of monsters. He’s an expert of the occult especially of the blood-sucking monster variety. So how do you get to fighting vampires for so long and make it look so good? Let’s find out!

Eric Brooks was born in 1929, London, to Tara and Lucas Cross. Well… yes but no, you see, the Crosses were part of the Order of Tyrana, an organization of occultists who focused on the study of vampires. To keep Tara safe from Lucas’ imprisonment for a crime he did not commit, she went into hiding as Vanessa Brooks at Madame Vanity’s, a brothel. Due to pregnancy complications, a doctor was called to help Tara with the birth of Eric. This doctor was in actuality, Deacon Frost, a vampire who drained Tara of her blood and life, he would have done the same to the just delivered baby but was chased away from the rest of the brothel.

Having his mother bitten by a vampire as she delivered him, Eric was born a dhampir, half-vampire, half-human. He would be raised in the brothel and at nine he would rescue an old man from vampires. This old man was Jamal Afari, a once great vampire hunter, he saw the potential in Eric and taught him everything he knew about fighting monsters. Eric took to this training and found he had a fondness for knives and swords, getting the nickname Blade by both fellow hunters and vampires alike.

Finding other hunters, Blade would form a gang who sought out vampires. Through their youthful arrogance, his entire party would be wiped out when they went up against a vampire too powerful for them. Blade would survive and his girlfriend, Glory, would be turned. This failed gang would haunt Blade for years to come. Dracula would make himself known to Blade when he would turn his old mentor into a vampire. Afari demanded Blade do what he was trained to do, kill the vampire and the one who had turned him. This began the decades long battle between Blade and Dracula.

Traveling the world to hunt vampires while also seeking out Deacon Frost and Dracula for revenge. While Blade preferred to work alone, he often found himself working with other hunters to fight of the monsters of the night. He would work with a team to defeat Dracula and there learn that wooden knives were capable of staking a vampire just as effectively as the old form but far quicker. By this time, Blade had been fighting vampires for decades and thanks to his half-vampire powers, he hadn’t aged beyond that of someone in their twenties.

Over the years, Blade would befriend all manner of monster hunters and heroes, including the Blue Marvel and Luke Cage‘s father in the seventies when he was often fighting Dracula on a near monthly basis. This was also the time he would make life long friends with Hannibal King, a private investigator who was turned into a vampire by Deacon Frost. The two would team up and deal with all manner of vampiric problems for years to come. They would form a team with Frank Drake, one of Dracula’s human descendants that Blade had teamed up with before when dealing with Dracula. Their team would eventually grow to include Dr. Strange, Ghost Rider, and Morbius, the living vampire, this would become the Nightstalkers, scourge of the monstrous threats and villains of the world.

Through their adventures together, the team members would often end up fighting one another against their will due to powerful, evil magics. One such fight had Morbius feed from Blade, while Blade was immune to regular vampires, Morbius was made from science, not magic. This caused Blade to gain all the strengths of a vampire while dealing with none of their weaknesses, he was now the Daywalker.

More and more often, Blade found himself teaming up with heroes for battles that went beyond vampires, even other creatures of the night he was used to. Soon, Blade was finding himself teaming up with the Avengers, first the Mighty Avengers, where he would take on such heroic code names as Spider Hero and Ronin, and then eventually the core team. Blade was a good fit on a team of heroes, monster hunting made him perfect for helping others and fighting evil in all its forms. When the War of the Realms occurred, Blade would fight in Antarctica against the Roxxon corporation because even when the rest of the magical realms unite to destroy Midgard, some corporation is gonna try to profit off it. Thankfully, Blade and the other heroes were successful and Blade lives to fight another night.

There you have it! Not only has Blade been on the big and small screen before, his films were what kickstarted this whole superhero movie boon again. His was the first Marvel character to gain success, then the X-Men, followed by Spider-Man before we would get to Iron Man with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Blade was what started the trend of Marvel having hit movies in the public eye. He’s finally going to be making his premiere in the MCU but his first steps on the silver screen are where all other Marvel comic movies follow. See you next time!

Suggested Reading
Tomb of Dracula #10
Blade
Nightstalkers
Mighty Avengers

Dr. Bustos
drbustos@comicattack.net