Marvel Comics: Blade Explained | Comics Explained

what's going on guys this is rob and gather round children gather round let papa rob teach you about blade here's the funny thing right i'm doing this because hopefully they're going to drop some information about blade at san diego which is going to drive up interest and people will watch this video if that doesn't happen this video is probably gonna flop i don't know we'll find out but if you really want me to blow your mind and we're gonna talk about this later blade did not become a day walker in marvel comics until after the blade movie was released in 1999 i know crazy right so check this out so blade originally appeared in mobile comics back in tomb of dracula issue number 10 in 1973 and he was created by marv wolfman and gene cullen now an important thing to understand here is that blade was very similar to luke cage in so far that he was marvel's attempt to capitalize on the existing blaxploitation movement taking place in hollywood which is to say the desire of marvel comics to bring in black audiences by basically creating characters that were black themselves and usually playing some kind of a heroic role the funny thing about this is that there was an interview that was done by gene coleman back in 2003 and tomorrow's publishing where he was talking about the creation of blade and saying and really seeming to illustrate this idea that marv wolfman of course said blade needs to be a black guy and the creation of him as we saw him at that point in time really seemed to be a tried-and-true collaboration between both gene colon and marv wolfman which in reality was something that happened very rarely in the 60s and 70s in marvel comics more often what you would find is you would find like a person would create something and then they would say they're the ones that created everything as opposed to it actually being the writer and artist both who essentially worked on it but the thing about this and what's really going to strike you as being fascinating here is the way blade was depicted in the early tomb of dracula stories and really running all the way up until he reappeared in 1984. it doesn't really look anything like the blade that you know and in fact he was depicted the way you saw fashion and characters depicted back during that point in time the only real thing we had about him is that he just kind of appeared in troom of dracula issue number 10 faced off against dracula and then appeared over the course of that comic so between 1973 and 1974 he appeared in issues 10 12 13 14 17 through 19 21 24 and 30. so he was just kind of like an off-again on-again villain of dracula that would just show up at differing points in time now the reality here was that over the course of the of 1973 going into 1974 blade was actually gaining popularity he was gaining a lot of interest among comic book readers because he was just so different you know the truth about tomb of dracula is that in a lot of ways it wasn't so much a holdover of marvel publishing when they were atlas comics publishing science fiction stories but it was the desire of marvel as they were publishing at the time to see if it was marketable to bring back the horror element at least in some kind of a comic and see if it would stick and it did the tomb of dracula comic is considered one of them one of the best comic runs that marvel had in relation to the character of dracula and in fact because of that comic dracula has stayed popular in marvel comics for decades right that run right there is kind of seminal now you may not have heard of it if you're not familiar with dracula but for those individuals out there who love the character of dracula it's a landmark story and in fact one of the most significant stories of marv wolfman and gene cullen now the thing about this is that by the time he got to the 30th issue that's when marvel was looking at the idea of doing something a little bit different with his character and so in issue number 30 what they did is they basically wrote him out of the dracula stories by basically having a scenario where blade approached dracula and then pitched this idea to him that what he wanted to do was essentially serve as dracula's agent operating out there and really like fast track vampires conquering the world then what he had done was put out this idea that vampires were going to conquer the world but what people like blade could do is they could actually make that happen faster of course dracula very much enjoying that idea ended up accompanying blade only to be ambushed by blade and a handful of his allies now this was kind of the extension of the nature of black exploitation and the building of blades entourage as it existed in the time in the sense that it was largely a black group so again marvel really trying to tie into uh bringing in black fans at that point in time so of course they ended up not really killing dracula but kind of overpowering him he was somewhat left for dead and then in turn one of his agents had shown up they had killed a few members of blade's group and then in turn went forward from there right dracula basically escaped and then blade kind of struck out on his own and that's where the vampire tales comics came into play now vampire's tales it was interesting for what it was but it was basically just a black and white comic at the time now something that i do want to point out about this initiative is vampire tales was an incredibly important comic for a couple different reasons and it wasn't really even a comic it was a magazine so the idea one of the things we've talked about was the comics code authority basically the governing body of comic books the comics had to follow rules at the time if they wanted to receive the seal of approval from the comics code which for parents buying comics for their kids was paramount so think of it as the comic book equivalent of like movie the movie rating system now or tv rating systems video game rating systems that kind of a thing and so what this meant was that by publishing vampire tales as a magazine under magazine management incorporated which was actually the owner of marvel comics but not publishing the magazine directly as a marvel comic itself it allowed them to circumvent the entirety of the comics code which basically meant they could have like some mild profanity i mean there wasn't really anything outright in terms of like cussing or anything like that you certainly didn't see anything like you would see in the 2000s with like jessica jones and marvel max but at the time in the 1970s it was pretty intense right for like publishing at that point in time it was a pretty intense comic but this one in particular set the groundwork for what would become the sort of on-again off-again ally slash friendship of blade and michael morbius because while the vampire tales stories dealt with uh michael morbius really kind of getting his first quote on quote solo run and dealing with a woman named amanda saint basically having to contend with a demon fire cult they were quite literally called demon fire that worshipped lucifer so those are the kind of stories that you saw in vampire tales his first encounter with blade in this comic was blade trying to kill him because he was a vampire it wasn't until adventure into fear issue number 24 in 1974 that you actually saw blade and morbius working together when blade realized that morbius was a living vampire and had this kind of personal plight that he had to contend with right like he didn't want to kill people but he basically had to feed on the blood of others in order to keep himself alive but tried to contend with that and tried to make up for those actions by being a superhero whenever he wasn't consuming folks and just based on that of course he and blade worked together to fight a greater threat but that set the stage for the relationship between the two which would become wildly significant not only in the 1990s but also going into the late 1990s and so following this the next major role for blade came in marvel preview issue number three and this was particularly important because while tomb of dracula issue number 13 gave us kind of an origin but not really all it told us is that blade basically his mom had died because she was bitten by a vampire when she was in the process of giving birth to him and that he's really just kind of been on the hunt for his mother's killer ever since right that's like his motivation for existing and that's it that's all we got in terms of an origin the funny thing about this is that in issue number three of marvel preview this is really one of those instances when chris claremont was kind of making a name for himself in marvel comics as the guy who could not only tell compelling stories something that we would see really come to fruition in his landmark run on the x-men but also as the guy who could tell stories really large form origins for individual characters now for blade himself the story was just kind of a continuation of what we saw in terms of him hunting for his mother's killer but as far as his origin went it was actually the most detailed we'd gotten up to that point and what we found out is that basically his mother was working in a brothel right madam vanities were also kind of uh giving or at least in the process of giving birth there that the unnamed person that had turned her was simply described in the same way he hadn't been named deacon frost yet he hadn't actually been given that name per se in marvel comics it was simply just a tall guy with silver hair and glowing eyes that had bit his mother and that following that were that's where the initial tomb of dracula story ended chris claremont continued on by basically saying that at nine years old he had experienced kind of an attack that actually turned out to be done by vampires but he was rescued by a guy named jamal afari who was himself a vampire hunter and that jamal afari had just kicked the drug habit or at least was in the process of getting rid of it took eric brooks under his wing as the son he never had eric brooks saw him as the father he never had and as what was in effect father and son that jamal taught eric brooks everything he needed to know not only about how to play the jazz trumpet but also everything he knew about vampires now the caveat to this and what was so wild about this is there came a point when dracula tracked down jamal and turned him to a vampire and when that happened that's when eric brooks had to kill his mentor and that's why eric brooks held a very particular hatred towards dracula himself as kind of a secondary thing defining his mother's killer and why he and dracula had fought so much over the course of the tomb of dracula's story but i wanted to wait until this particular point in his publication history to illustrate that this sort of origin and this feud between dracula and and in blade is really the result of retcon in marvel comics it didn't initially start out that way it was just changed later on but that's why marvel preview number three is so significant for blade because where he was a teenager just hunting down vampires and using whatever fighting tactics he had to overcome them the reality is that he was unpolished he was untrained jamal afari largely fixed a lot of that taught him the things he needed to know to be an effective vampire hunter so in a lot of ways dracula had essentially killed the father of eric brooks even if he was not his biological father and so where blade was rolled back over into the tomb of dracula stories in uh really in 1975 running all the way up until the series cancellation that what you found was that aside from blade helping dracula defeat a villain named dr sun and then asking dracula to help him track down the vampire that killed his mother and of course that being refused and the two of them sort of fighting there wasn't a whole lot doing with blade in relation to dracula he had some significant moments there but nothing overly valuable and in fact following this in 1977 or following 1977 he actually disappeared from marvel comics for about six years returning in doctor strange issue number 61 in 1974 with what was in effect believed to have been the death of dracula at the time and then following that vanished entirely from marvel comics until you got to 1990. now the funny thing about blade's return came with kind of tomb of dracula volume 2 when it was issues two through four there wasn't a whole lot doing here outside of the fact that everybody was convinced he was crazy and he ended up in a mental institution the reality here is that dan chichester in 1992 had basically brought back blade in what was in effect a wholesale rework of the supernatural and mythological side of marvel comics and that's one of the things to know when it comes to different sides of marvel really only one part of marvel has remained intact since its inception and that's the traditional role of superheroes right good guys fighting bad guys so like the role of the fantastic four the role of spider-man or the x-men or something like that different threats have emerged over the years regarding those characters but by and large since their introduction they haven't really changed all that much and a lot of it was because seminal stories involving those characters took place in the early days of their publication history which set the stage for what they were about right like the introduction of the sinister six and spider-man annual number one when it came to the supernatural side of marvel it was just kind of like whatever and so the way this played out is that over the course of blades publication history what you saw was a coming together of blade alongside two other guys frank drake and hannibal king and the way these characters operated is that in the early 1990s marvel introduced a group called borderline investigations so what these guys did is they essentially investigated things that dealt with like vampires and so on and so forth it was a way to take the characters of of blade and frank and hannibal and give them more of a purposeful role in marvel comics because up to that point they were just kind of running around in these individual books hunting vampires things like that now one of the cool things here is that this was part of a larger story that would introduce what we know as the midnight suns and so that's why if you ever look up marvel comics you'll see two groups you'll see the midnight suns composed of the night stalkers and then basically everybody else but the whole idea behind this was again a reworking of the supernatural mythos of marvel and so this era of blades history is as much a kind of reworking of blade as it is the supernatural stuff and so within this era of storytelling this kind of night stalkers comic book run that in night stalkers number one which is when blade really made his return after all these years that he took on the appearance that we most commonly see with this character right the leather jacket or the black leather jacket and all that kind of stuff but the larger story here dealt with the return or the emergence of a woman by the name of lilith who was literally like the mother of demons and so this whole thing regarding like frank and and hannibal and blade being brought back together again uh the idea of like morbius and ghost rider and so on and so forth all those individuals coming together was actually done at the manipulation of doctor strange in order to bring them together to have them essentially overcome the forces of lilith and so that's why you ended up seeing things like the midnight massacre stuff like that where blade got his hands on the dark hole believing it could be used to destroy the occult all the while not realizing that the purpose behind this is that that individual who used the darkhold would basically become the new demogorge so essentially a kind of god among gods but would be under the control of catholic the whole time so in effect blade using the darkhold would quite literally lead to catholic returning to earth ultimately of course he was stopped and the day was saved and that kind of thing but that really that kind of discussion goes largely into the nature of the midnight suns more than it simply does focusing on blade and so while i am kind of skimming through his time as part of the midnight suns and the night stalkers just because of the fact that again that's really more of a discussion about the nature of the midnight suns themselves one of the things that i do want to point out here is there were some very significant moments that came out of this comic book run specifically the night stalkers themselves and the the larger role that played with blade in the sense that blade as we know him now really began to take form during night stalkers now one of the funny things about this is that a lot of the nightstalkers origin is really told in hindsight which is to say that during this time when blade was basically missing that it was dr strange that it kind of manipulated things behind the scenes that you had drake and you had these guys who were operating as borderline investigations but that kind of took place off panel and that once the team really came back around and effectively reformed it was doctor strange manipulating things to ensure that group reformed and that they would run into the other individuals that would make up the larger midnight sun's team in order to face off against lilith but marvel of course did this because blade was considered such an outlier in marvel that rolling him in with doctor strange or having doctor strange kind of incorporate that group in there brought them closer in line with quote-unquote main marvel comics as a whole and really made the team more i guess relatable or acceptable by the general reader base that wasn't really looking to read anything that was considered french the issue that you had with blade at this point in time at least following the whole night stalkers cancellation and everything is that when it came to him showing back up on the scene in marvel comics in the early 1990s and you had him forming the night stalkers along with frank and hannibal and then you had the the really them joining in with everybody else and forming the loose knit group the midnight suns is that with this story arc it was done for a particular purpose but once lilith and her lilin were defeated there wasn't really a way to tell a compelling story with blade because you were kind of back to square one with what do we do with this guy who's hunting vampires and his real major nemesis is deacon frost that story was wrapped up in in the old tomb of dracula stories the dracula himself kind of comes around every once in a while but at this point in time in the 1990s nobody really wanted to see comics where blade was fighting dracula because by this point so much work had been done with so many other superheroes that that was just exceedingly basic storytelling that with chris claremont and the x-men what you had was like a soap opera featuring the x-men it was very character-driven the fantastic four were now a multiversal exploration team that when it came to groups like the avengers they had these massive space-faring escapades in addition to all the stories on earth then you got blade fighting dracula it just didn't stick and so while you did get stories like blade vampire hunter issues 1 through 10 by ian edgenton or you had stories like blade crescent city blues at the end of the day you also had the common bust of the mid 1990s right we kind of talked about that in the past about how fans were buying comics thinking they would just increase in value forever which led to marvel and dc publishing more of those comics which drove down the value because now you had like 15 copies of like an issue number one of a comic book that the results of this is that people just stopped buying comics so marvel started going belly up and what this meant is that marvel stopped publishing stories or at least hiring the best writers and best artists for stories if they didn't think they were bankable and so blade going from the mid to late 1990s was quite literally a reflection of superheroes that were suffering under the comic boss of the 1990s you can track blade by that his stories weren't compelling they weren't overly interesting they were intriguing for what they were but unless you were a big time blade fan you couldn't really get anything out of it the result of this is that blade fell completely and almost totally into obscurity with the exception of only those fans who love supernatural stuff but all that changed when the blade film came out now the interesting thing about this is that as most of you guys know from the blade film he's a day walker right he can walk around in broad daylight basically even though he's a vampire and kill vampires while they're sleeping it's one of the most menacing aspects of his character as far as vampires go in the comics he didn't become a day walker until around this same time as well now that happened in peter parker's spider-man issue 7-8 uh when he was bitten by michael morbius and because of the nature of michael morbius's vampirism right being a living vampire that this spread to eric brooks and it wasn't until you got to the newly relaunched blade issue number one that you actually saw him uh operating as a day walker realizing the full extent of what the bite of michael morbius did and allowing him to walk around in the daytime but there isn't really a clear cut explanation here as to which one came first is it one of those things where because the blade film was going to focus on him being a day walker that the events of peter parker's spiderman number seven and eight were basically done in order to coincide with the film or if the comics were already fleshed out and the film copied the comics we don't really know and we don't have a full-fledged explanation there what we do know however is whether it was because of the film or the comic following the film and the comic blade went forward as a vampire that could walk around in broad daylight and what this did is it opened up a host of new possibilities for what marvel could do because the alternative was to have him running around at night killing vampires where he found him and like that was it by allowing him to operate during the day it meant he could function when other superheroes were functioning and because he could do that now there was ample room for team ups and so what you saw here following 1999 in in peter parker's spider-man uh issues seven and eight as well as the blade film was just this explosion of appearances in blade in all these different comic books where it never happened before now the other part of this is that because the movie was so popular marvel just threw them everywhere right they put them all over the place and people ate it up because the general person out there who had never heard of blade had gone to see this movie with wesley snipes being the big name draw and was like who the hell is blade ran to the local comic book store and suddenly there was blade all over the place and so while marvel did relaunch blade vampire hunter as blade vol 2 it was cancelled shortly after because it was the same problem that it always was with blade marvel didn't know how to write a good story about him really one of the things to know about his character what makes blade intriguing isn't so much himself it's the circumstances that he's in and the teams that he's a part of that makes him interesting on his own he's just a guy who hunts vampires and while for some people that may be a really intriguing element of his character for most people it wasn't and so that's why when you got blade vol 3 which was basically a marvel max line that story was really really cool but that story dealt with a group called the trikes or tricks or whatever you want to call them which were essentially the marvel comics adaptation of the reapers from blade 2. it was interesting for what it was but unless you saw blade 2 you didn't really care and so it's one of those weird and wonky situations for a character that doesn't resonate but again he had some interesting stories for example blade vol 4 basically dealt with him being sent back in time by doctor doom uh he ultimately ended up coming or at least saving the life of his father only to find out that his father was aware of a prophecy to essentially resurrect dracula to return vampire souls to their bodies making them invulnerable that blade ended up having to kill his own friend hannibal different things along those lines but again you know it didn't necessarily resonate too much however it's not to say that there was never anything beneficial about this guy again we're kind of running short on time here so sort of fast tracking a little bit kind of giving you guys the highlights one of the more interesting moments that came with blade and really recent memory actually came out of mighty avengers now this is mighty avengers vol 2 the first mighty avengers actually was led by carol danvers was part of the original civil war event really the aftermath of civil war where she was kind of like the long arm of the law so to speak where she essentially operated to apprehend any superheroes out there who refused to register after civil war was over and the bad guys essentially won right like registration was the law of the land with mighty avengers vol 2 this actually came really sprung bored off of jonathan hickman's infinity and like thanos and the coal obsidian showing up and like ebony maw tricking doctor strange or kind of forcing doctor strange to summon schumacher to this plane of existence and so on and so forth blade showed up here and he was actually donning the moniker of ronin and depending on who you are as a blade fan people love that and indeed that's probably one of the cooler moments of his character when he was operating as a version of ronan in marvel comics it was pretty solid but for the most part right now in marvel comics and as it really has been for a number of years blate's just kind of there he's just a guy who's there and marvel tells stories about him sometimes and sometimes are interesting sometimes they're not at the moment right now he is on jason aaron's avengers team how long that's gonna last i don't entirely know you can bet your bottom dollar when the the movie comes out he's gonna get his own comic if he hasn't already he's gonna get his own comic book out there and i'm sure people are probably gonna read it for a little while but the real test here the real question is can a compelling story be written about blade because he is at the end of the day a phenomenal superhero he has a really really intriguing backstory but he never really has any stories that you're actually interested in reading so with that being said guys we're gonna bring this to an end i'm sorry all the blade fans out there you know i don't mean to smash on the guy it's just i think it's important to make sure that people look at blade in perspective but we're gonna bring this to an end thank you guys for watching and i will catch you all later peace

Channel: Comics Explained

Views: 126,054

Keywords: comics explained, comicsexplained, marvel explained, fluidic beats, comics, comic books, marvel, dc, infinity gauntlet, world breaker hulk, crisis on infinite earths, comic explained, infinity war, the batman who laughs, doomsday clock, Blade, Blade Marvel, Blade Marvel Trailer, Marvel Comics, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Midnight Sons Marvel, vampires marvel, Doctor Strange, vampire tales marvel, Avengers, avengers endgame

Id: 7uSfU_Aqz60

Length: 23min 20sec (1400 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 21 2022