S2E9 – Blade Is My Name, Vampire Hunting Is My Game

This week we’re covering season 2, episode 9 of Spider-Man: The Animated Series – ‘Blade The Vampire Hunter’.

Recap: 2:02
Review: 32:39
Comic Origins: 37:17

Get your Morbius bingo cards ready, because we have even more naval-gazing from everyone’s “favourite” artificial vampire. We also have the introduction of Blade the Blampire Blunter, delivering some Blade-sploitation for all you suckers.

After that, we dive into his comic origins, starting with Tomb of Dracula and Vampire Tales, before discussing his further appearances in Adventure Into Fear, Doctor Strange, Peter Parker: Spider-Man, Nightstalkers, Blade (1994-1995), Blade (1998), Blade: Vampire Hunter (1999) and Blade (2006). There’s also some discussion of crotch-first combat strategy, Dolemite and Speed 2: Cruise Control.

Listen on Apple Podcasts here

Spotify here

Stitcher here

Further podcast notes

Now for some comic origins!

Eric Brooks aka Blade was first introduced in Tomb of Dracula #10 (1973), written by Marv Wolfman and with art by Gene Colan.

Here’s his first appearance, and he looks a lot different to how most of us will picture the half-vampire half-badass.

Blade speaks, for lack of a better term, jive – as was the way during Marvel comics in this era. Here he is talking shit to Quincy Harker and playing with his trademark wooden knives.

This is the Marvel version of Dracula, atop the cruise ship he’s taken control of – right before he’s defeated by Blade in their first official meeting.

Blade has no respect – even for Dracula. Just another bloodsucker for him to stake.

He later appears in Vampire Tales (the same series that Morbius crops up in) #8 in 1974.

These black and white comics are pretty damn good, and pretty damn brutal when they want to be. Take that, comics code.

It’s in this series that Blade eventually shares his origin story – where his mother was killed by Dracula (later retconned to be Deacon Frost).

Later, he appears in a variety of other crossover comics, including Adventure into Fear and The Legion of Monsters – where he crosses paths with Morbius, the Living Vampire.

We eventually find out that Blade is immune to vampire bites due to the nature of his birth.

The action in these stories is really incredible at times. There are a variety of artists and writers involved but I really do recommend that people check them out.

And this is Blade killing some vampire children, after just a few moments of hesitation. Just in case you were wondering how dark his stories can go.

Here’s Dracula and Blade facing off in Doctor Strange #62:

Blade is later revamped in Nightstalkers – a look which made him popular enough to get is own solo series in ’94.

They don’t hold back on the insane bloodthirst in Blade’s story – nor the shoulder spikes. You might notice he looks similar to his Spider-Man: The Animated Series counterpart here.

In this comic they retell the origin, explaining the vampire bite immunity and making sure readers knew it was Deacon Frost, not Dracula, who bit his mother.

In 1998, we got a three-part solo series that I highly recommend. It makes the most of the character as far as I’m concerned, and comes close to the interesting action of his Vampire Tales issues.

By the cover, you’d guess this has a lot in common with the Wesley Snipes movie that came out the same year – but it’s quite different on the inside. Here’s some of the moral ambiguity in the series:

He crosses over into Peter Parker: Spider-Man briefly, where he ends up bitten by Morbius, the living vampire…. that will come back later.

Then we get the 1999 comic… which was awful. I’m sorry, I have nothing nice to say about it.

They go hard on reminding you that this guy is cool, even calling him ‘the baddest of the bad’. It really doesn’t work for me.

This is the series where they re-establish Blade as a daywalker with all the powers of a vampire, using a previous time he was bitten by Morbius (an artificial vampire) as reason for this – rather than the fact his mother was bitten by Deacon Frost.

And then this suit upgrade happens. It doesn’t last long.

In 2006 we got a new Blade series where vampires are infiltrating SHIELD – and even Spider-Man gets turned for a little bit. Lucky for him, radioactive spider-blood is pretty tough stuff.

A great tagline – I have to admit.

That’s all for this week, folks. If you missed the last episode – be sure to check it out here.