CSBG Archive
Comic Book Alphabet of Vampires – E
Again, coinciding with First Second Books’ Vampire Month, here’s the next in our alphabet of comic book vampires!
Here we get nice and sneaky!
Enjoy!
Eric Brooks
Eric Brooks is the real name of Blade the Vampire Hunter, who is the most famous of the various vampire hunters who hunted down Dracula during Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan’s run on Tomb of Dracula.
Blade’s mother was a prostitute who attacked by a vampire named Deacon Frost as she was delivering young Eric. As a result, he had a lot of the same features of vampires without actually being one himself.
Blade fought vampires for many years, and after the Montesi Formula destroyed them, he joined the team Nightstalkers, with his fellow former Dracula hunters, Frank Drake and Hannibal King.
Then, in a battle with Morbius, Morbius bit Blade, transforming Blade into a “Daywalker,” a vampire who could walk outside during the day and basically had none of the normal weaknesses of vampires.
Blade was the lead character in a series of successful films starring Wesley Snipes, yet he never has been able to have a successful solo comic book series.
And Marvel sure has tried!
Hopefully he gets another chance in the future!!
9 Comments
The Mutt
May 23, 2008 at 10:35 pm
You’re a clever devil, Mister Cronin.
I’ve always wondered – - Towards the end of the run of Tomb of Dracula, there were a few guest shots by Marvel superheroes. That makes sense if they were trying to get sales up. But why did Marv choose the Silver Surfer? Or was it his choice?
And why wasn’t Tomb of Dracula in the top ten of greatest runs ever!?!
Daniel O' Dreams
May 23, 2008 at 10:42 pm
Pretty sneaky sis!
I like how Blade’s hair gets progressively shorter over the years until he’s bald.
Daywalker status doesn’t make him immune to male pattern baldness, apparently.
buttler
May 23, 2008 at 10:50 pm
So was the daywalker thing just to bring the comics in line with the movies? I was a big Tomb of Dracula fan, and I sure don’t remember Blade having any powers pre-Snipes.
Jason
May 23, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Don’t forget Blade: The Series, which only lasted one season on Spike. While Sticky Fingaz (yeah, you heard me) wasn’t the best lead, the supporting cast did kick ass. Also, they had a vampire that looked to be a very young girl, and she liked draining babies of blood. Yes, it was a pretty good show.
Tom
May 24, 2008 at 4:31 am
And now Blade has another team, the Vanguard, in the pages of Marvel Comics Presents. Let’s see how long this concept lasts…
owen gieni
May 24, 2008 at 7:30 am
Quesada just mentioned Blade joining the new Captain Britain MI3 comic in his last cup o’ Joe. The character is too good not to use. I liked the Guggenheim/Chaykin series quite a bit, and if they couldn’t make that work as a monthly then I don’t know how anyone could. Perhaps that rumored Millar/JR jr collab would do it. It would have to have HUGE names attached.
Matt Bird
May 24, 2008 at 9:03 am
I actually really liked the TV series, much more than the movies. I thought Mr. Fingaz did a fine job, though Blade was really more of a supporting character and the lead was actually that babe from the Chrysler commercials.
Denn
May 24, 2008 at 3:45 pm
I liked that Mr Fingaz was so damn enthusiastic about the role. He seemed to actually likecomics rather then the usual stars pretending too.
Wiseman
December 30, 2010 at 4:08 pm
The popular blood bath scene of the first Blade movie of him fighting and killing a 1000 vampires as well as the idea and to have Blade, a martial artist non-stop fighting killing vampire machine with a cool swagger bad-ass attitude, were all concepts of Original Blade trilogy Producer, Ken Willis. Who had in fact actually introduced Actor, Wesley Snipes, to the Marvel Blade superhero character comic book. Also, Mr. Willis was instrumental teaching Wesley how to act and play the character before the project was brought to New Line Cinema in the late 90′s. Although, Blade trilogy Writer, David Goyer did do wonderful job writing all 3 Blade orignal scripts. This was just to answer Butler’s question why Blade had powers and he didn’t pre-Snipes? Another footnote Actor, Wesley Snipes, hadn’t heard of the Marvel comic book Blade or knew that the Marvel superhero Blade was African American prior to Mr. Willis.