Blade
I was approached to do a Blade submission a few weeks ago.Spent quite a bit of my free time immersing myself in the character. I watched the movies, borrowed a ton of Blade comics, snooped around on-line, and re-read whatever comics I had lying in the shelves.
I just can't understand why Marvel can't seem to get it right.
Blade's an old character, and historically, he has never been able to support his own series, instead being used mainly as a supporting character in those old Tomb of Dracula books. However, the guy has OBVIOUS potential; simply because unlike most other vampire hunters (in ANY medium), Blade's a bonafide psycho.
Sometime in the 90's, the bigwigs at Marvel noticed that as well. Blade immediately spun out of the Nightstalkers book and was given his own series.
It went downhill from there.
That series was under the capable hands of Ian Edgington and Douglas Wheatley, and they came up with a fairly interesting and complex plot. However, this was in the early 90's, and I don't think too many kids were looking for those qualities. The book was cancelled after a dozen or so issues.
After the success of the first Blade movie, Marvel tried again, with another series, written by Bart S--
-- eh?
Bart SEARS?!?!?! As a WRITER?!?!? Geez, no wonder that didn't last very long. To be honest, I couldn't do anything more than skim through this run-- it was that bad. It was seriously overwritten, the plot made my head spin (Blade: Agent of SHIELD???) and the art was horrendous (sears himself was okay as an artist, but he didn't draw the entire mini). Just terrible, terrible stuff.
And yet, Blade II was another resounding success.
Which prompted another Marvel attempt, this time under the MAX imprint. Oooh, boobies and swearing! No way can this fail!!!
Well, you'd think.
Okay, maybe that's a tad harsh. Chris Hinz and Steve Pugh's little tale wasn't bad at all, but neither was it great. Mediocre is the word, really. Pugh's art was inconsistent-- brilliant at times, amateurish at others. Hinz writing seemed forced at times, as if he just couldn't let go of any "cool" scenes in his head. Compared to Sears' Blade however, this was Watchmen. And those Bradstreet covers were pretty slick.
I browsed through a few other lame Blade comics and specials. The only one that stood out was Crescent City Blues, a nice tale illustrated well by Gene Colan.
Interestingly enough, the best Blade I saw was in a guest appearance on one o my Gambit comics, illustrated by one of my gods, Steve Skroce. Skroce's version of Blade was perfect, a half-human muscle car ridin' whirlwind on a warpath.
Skroce got it. So few others, unfortunately, haven't. Some have tried to turn him into a superhero (Sears), while others tried to inject a noirish aspect to the character (Hinz). At the end of the day though, Blade's a psychopathic killing-machine. It's not hard to see-- just rent the movies!
posted by butch @ 1/11/2006
1 Comments:
a demented psycho vampire killer with a tormented soul -- blade rules!
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