For those of you only familiar with the character of Blade from those insipid movies with Wesley Snipes, there was a time when Blade was more... well, groovy. Rather than a body armored, flattop wearing weirdo in Oakleys with a husky voice and a samurai sword, Blade was more like a cross between Professor Van Helsing and Shaft (although Gene Colan claims to have modeled his looks on a composite of black actors, including Jim Brown).
See, back in the day, the writers of Tomb of Dracula had more sense than to have vampire hunters using silver bullets or spikes or silver nitrate powder, etc. Despite what the Blade movies and Dracula 2000 would have you believe, SILVER IS FOR WEREWOLVES! NOT VAMPIRES!!! So, wait, no silver stakes? No Sword? Why was he called "Blade" ? Simple. Blade had a bandoleer of wooden throwing knives which allowed him to stake vampires from a safe distance.
Well, usually a safe distance...
Blade also has a leg up on the average vampire hunter. Seems his mama was killed by a vampire while she was preggers with li'l Blade. Blade absorbed certain "vampiric enzymes" and was born with quasi-vampiric powers, including longevity, improved reflexes and a resistance to becoming a vampire.
Which all makes him a totally kick-ass vampire killer.
Blade was quite probably the first Black supernatural hero... he was not to be (as we shall see tomorrow) the last.
I can only reiterate you and George Hamilton: "Silver is for werewolves!" I don't see why a silver sword is cooler than a polished mahogany (with an iron core, like a billy club) blade.
ReplyDeleteIf only Blade had staked Dracula in this issue #4, we might have been spared the world we suffer in today. Start with a whacky idea of a horrific monster being the protagonist-star of his own comic and end with "Twilight".
Blaze: LOL! It's pretty sad when "Love at First Bite" did better research than Wes Craven or Guillermo Del Toro! In T.O.D.'s defense, at least Dracula was still a villain and a MONSTER in his own comic. I'd love to see Blade vs. Edward.
ReplyDeleteMost folks blame Anne Rice for the "Sympathetic Vampire", but I'm pretty sure it all goes back to Barnabas Collins.