The Marvel Universe is an incredible place where even vampires are real, and there’s one man who hunts them: Eric Brooks. Also known as Blade, I’ll be breaking down and explaining what you need to know about the hero in this article.
Who Is Blade in the Marvel Comics?
Created by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan, Blade debuted in 1973’s The Tomb of Dracula #10 and is one of Marvel’s horror-inspired heroes. The character came during a time in which Marvel was bringing in a lot more supernatural and monster elements following the relaxation of the Comics Code Authority, a draconian set of rules that made putting such beasts as vampires into a book nearly impossible. Those horror-themed comics ended up proving extremely popular with readers.
In terms of his history, the vampire Deacon Frost drank the blood of Brooks’ mother while he was still in utero, resulting in him becoming part vampire. This gave Blade many of the powers and abilities of vampires, but without many of their weaknesses, such as a vulnerability to sunlight. Later in life, Blade became a vampire hunter and has since slain many of those creatures of the night.
Over the years, Blade has used his powers as part of a variety of different groups. Recently, he was a member of the Avengers under T’Challa, AKA Black Panther, and in the past, he’s been part of the Midnight Sons, a group of supernatural superheroes who got a game of their own in 2022 from Firaxis and 2K.
What About Blade in Film & Video Games?
Blade first appeared in the big screen in 1998’s Blade, which starred Wesley Snipes in the titular role. The actor returned for two subsequent movies, 2002’s Blade 2 and 2004’s Blade: Trinity, before the series stopped. Although they’re not perfect movies, the Blade trilogy is a lot of fun, and it introduced a lot of people to the characters.
More recently, Mahershala Ali was cast as Blade in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He’s slated to have a solo film in 2025, though progress on it has been a bit slow. While Blade had a voice cameo at the end of 2021’s Eternals, that’s really all we’ve — pun-intended — heard of him since then. Still, Ali has said that he’s happy with how production on the Blade movie is coming along.
Blade has also appeared as a character in a lot of different video games. Outside of tie-in games to those aforementioned films, he’s been a mainstay of such series as Ultimate Alliance and Marvel vs. Capcom. He’s also a card in Marvel Snap. Most recently, it was announced that Blade would headline a game from Arkane Studios.
And that’s who Blade is and what you need to know about the Marvel hero.
