Reprints material from Vampire Tales #8-9, Marvel Preview #3, 6, Blade: Crescent City Blues #1 and Marvel Shadows And Light #1
Written by Marv Wolfman, Chris Claremont, James Felder and Christopher Golden.
Penciled by Tony DeZuniga, Gene Colan, Rico Rival and Jose Landronn.
Armed with nothing but wooden knives, Blade, the vampire slayer fights a one-man war against vampires!
Blade has returned to London. He learns that a man known as Billy-Blue has been murdered and all signs indicate that he was killed by vampires. Blade locates Billy-Blue at a morgue and learns that Billy has become a vampire. The vampire hunter ends Billy-Blue's suffering, but not before he gets some crucial information from him.
Blade learns that the vampires who attacked Billy-Blue are part of an organization called the Legion Of The Damned. Their activities are coordinated by a vampire named Anton Vierken. Blade locates the Legion's headquarters and pays them a visit. When he arrives, he's attacked by several vampires.
The vampire hunter battles Vierken and his minions and is bitten during the scuffle. Vierken believes Blade is now his slave and will become a vampire. Shortly after this, Vierken is called away by the Legion's true leader, Lady Marguerite D'Alescio. She is not a vampire, but Lady Marguerite has a telepathic connection to Dracula himself!
Thanks to his immunity to vampire bites, Blade does not become a vampire. He also escapes with a computer printout that details the Legion's activities.
In addition to the vampires, Blade must also contend with Scotland Yard. He gains the particular ire of Inspector Dai Thomas. The inspector tolerates Blade's activities but doesn't approve of his methods. The vampire slayer doesn't care what the police think, but Thomas is just waiting for Blade to screw up so he can arrest him.
Vierken and the Legion do not take Blade's activities lightly. They kill several of his friends, including Lady Vanity, who was like a mother to Blade.
The Legion also captures Blade's girlfriend, Safron Caulder. Lady Marguerite makes a deal with Blade: If he wants Safron to live, he must surrender to the Legion and trade his life for Safron's.
Blade is dropped off at a location where the Legion is waiting for him. Instead of surrendering, he lashes out with his wooden knives. His fight with the vampires takes place in a dense fog. When he throws a knife at a vampire, he is shocked to see it kill a 12 year-old girl named Josie Harper. Blade is shocked and disgusted with himself.
Blade plans to turn himself in to the police for Josie's murder after he rescues Safron from the Legion. Dai Thomas is investigating the murder and believes Blade is guilty. However, Inspector Kate Fraser, a police psychic, says Blade didn't murder the girl. Her psychic powers tell her Josie was killed by the Legion Of The Damned, who framed Blade for the murder. Fraser needs to find concrete evidence of this to prove Blade's innocence.
Will Blade be charged with murder? Can the vampire hunter free Safron from the Legion before he turns himself in? Will he succeed in taking down Vierken and Lady Marguerite?
Plus, Blade visits an old house that's full of vampires. When they attack him with lethal intentions, killing them is his only means of survival. But how can he do that, when all of the vampires are children?
Review:
I've been a fan of Blade for a long time, but these stories were all new to me. They're just good, solid horror tales filled with action from start to finish. I should mention that these stories were originally published as part of Marvel's magazine line, which was aimed at an older audience. This explains why there's more killing than the average Bronze Age comic story. Also, even though the word "brothel" never appears in the script, it's obvious that Lady Vanity runs a brothel. This tpb is rated PSR+, which means it's intended for readers age 15 and up.
Story:
The first part is co-credited to Chris Claremont and Blade's creator, Marv Wolfman. Blade is constantly outnumbered by vampires in every fight scene. Yet he's always confident and trash-talking the whole time. I couldn't help but admire his boldness. Blade is the type of person you'd want on your side in a fight.
Wolfman wrote the last portion of the book. "The House Of Terror" is short, but it contains some good character development for Blade. He's often been depicted as a cold-hearted, ruthless killing machine, even if it's for a righteous cause. But when he encounters vampire children, it's difficult for Blade to kill them, even if he knows they are centuries old. Blade has more empathy than he lets on.
Nice work from Wolfman and Claremont.
Art:
Tony De Zuniga pencils most of the book and his art looks good here. He penciled a bunch of horror stories for Marvel and DC and always worked well in the genre. De Zuniga gives us lots of great fight scenes between Blade and the Legion and also does a good job drawing London landmarks.
The last portion features art from Gene Colan, who penciled Blade's first appearance in Tomb Of Dracula. It looks great. Colan truly was a master of horror comic art.
How does it look?:
I usually deal with recoloring issues in this portion of my reviews. That doesn't apply here, since these stories, like this reprint book, were originally published in black and white. Nevertheless, here's a page from Marvel Preview #8, borrowed from one of my favorite blogs, Diversions Of The Groovy Kind:
Here's how the same page appears in Blade: Black And White:
Extras:
The book contains two Blade stories that were published in the 1990s.
Blade: Black And White features some great stories from Blade's early days. This book makes me wish Marvel had published more Blade solo tales during the Bronze Age. The only thing that keeps me from giving this tpb a higher rating is that it's a pretty thin book.
J.A. Morris' rating:
3 Sals.
