Is It Really Possible For Blade To Kill Every Single Marvel Vampire? – Screen Rant

The Marvel Universe is home to more than its fair share of horrors, and chief among them is the vampire race - an army of fiends who shelter in the shadows, thirsting for human blood.There are many groups in the Marvel Universe dedicated to fighting back - the X-Men alone have a surprising history of going up against Dracula - but chief among them is the vampire hunter Eric Brooks, akaBlade.

Most famously depicted by Wesley Snipes in thepre-MCUBladefilm trilogy - and soon to enter the MCU as played byMahershala Ali - Blade is a half-vampire who spends every hour of the night (and parts of the day) hunting and killing Marvel's vampires. Created in 1973 by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan, Blade has been cutting a swathe through the undead for decades, and while he's had some major victories, there's no sign that his crusade is actually any closer to ridding the world of the vampire scourge. This begs the question: for all his badass one-liners and lone-wolf prowess, is Blade all talk, or is he actually capable of killing every single Marvel vampire?

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The first thing we have to do is make sure the question is fair, and this hinges on Blade's actual mission. Heroes like Spider-Man and Daredevil fight criminals on a daily basis, but they're not trying to lock up every single criminal in the world. If Blade is just patrolling the streets saving who he can, there's no point asking any more of him than that. So, is Bladetryingto kill every vampire?

In 2004'sMarvel Team-Up #8, by Robert Kirkman and Jeff Johnson, the Punisher and Blade find themselves at odds after they tail different parties to a vampire/gangsterweapons deal. Killing time while waiting for the deal to go down, Blade asks the Punisher about his ultimate endgame, making it clear that for Blade, total vampiric eradication is the aim of the game:

What I'm saying is, we both got our revenge, and yet we keep going. This has become our life. Difference is - my lifespan being what it is for the half-vampire parts and all - I could succeed. I could eventually rid the world of vampires. I'm doing good every step of the way, for sure, but ultimately there is a goal I could reach.

So, yes, Blade is first and foremost trying to rid the world of vampires, even if he recognizes it's a tall order. This is backed up by his relatively fanatical behavior when it comes to vampires. In "Curse of the Mutants" - anX-Mencrossover event running from 2010-2011 over various titles - Blade tries to kill the recently bitten Jubilee before being repelled by Wolverine. Likewise, inCaptain Britain and MI13, he joinedthe British intelligence service just to get close enough to stake LadyJacqueline Falsworth, aka Spitfire, on the basis that despite her being a "good" vampire, she would eventually turn. Although the two began dating once Spitfire proved she had control over her bloodlust, it's clear that Blade lives by a "stake first, ask questions later" approach.

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Blade certainly wants to kill every Marvel vampire, but what that means in a practical sense depends on how many there are. 2004'sTomb of Dracula- by Bruce Jones, Robert Rodi, and Jamie Tolagson -suggests a rough total. In this limited series, Blade and a group of vampire hunters attempt to stop a "once every thousand years" process which would allow Dracula to gain godlike power. Dracula has to enter a four-day gestation period for this to happen, and is using his control over other vampiresto gather a defensive wallwhich Blade estimates will be"a dozen deep and stretching into the thousands."This suggests an approximate worldwide count of more than 120,000 Marvel vampires.

This estimate is supported byevidence from the Ultimate Universe. In "Blade Versus the Avengers" fromUltimate Avengers 3 - by Mark Millar and Steve Dillion -a new vampire leader ascends with a plan to infect first Marvel's superhumans and then Earth. Though this is an alternate Earth, the way that Blade and vampires are depicted within it don't deviate noticeably from the mainstream reality of Earth-616. Here, confronted by the vampire army, Blade says:

There's thousands of them too. I'm counting fifty, maybe a hundred thousand and they're marching behind a brand new leader. My god. This must be every vampire on the planet...

So 100,000-120,000 vampires, plus a few stragglers capable of resisting Dracula's commands (or unable to obey), seems like a fair count, but there's one more wrinkle.In 2006's twelve-issueBlade series, Blade completed a prophecy which he believed would return the soul of every living vampire. Instead, he revived every single vampire that had ever lived. Not just the ones he'd killed - all of them, ever, brought back to "life" all at once. That's right - on paper, Blade might just be the worst vampire hunter in all of fiction, and that makes it even more important to figure out whether he can carry out his mission.

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So the number of vampires in the mainstream Marvel Universe numbers around 120,000 plus however many had died before 2007. That's not as many more as you'd think - vampires don't die of natural causes, and as a species they seem to have found their natural balance with their prey - but it's still a lot of vampires. It's unclear how slowly Blade ages, but having reached adulthood in the normal number of human years, it doesn't seem like he's immortal. Add to this the fact that vampires exist all over the world, have a coordinated society, and are capable of creating more vampires pretty easily and Eric Brooks' chances don't look good. And yet... it's possible.

Related:Marvel Theory: Dracula's Death Sets Up Blade (& MCU Vampires)

Stakes and silver blades won't be enough for Blade to wipe out the vampire scourge, but the Marvel Universe does offer up a few options for extinction. First, there's the Cosmic Cube. This option may feel a little like cheating - Blade tends not to get involved in cosmic scuffles - but if Blade could get ahold of this device (or another all-powerful doodad like the Infinity Gauntlet) he could either wipe out or cure every single vampire.

Of course, that's not likely to happen, so how about a tactic that Bladehasused before? The first to come to mind is likely from "Blade Versus the Avengers," in which Captain America uses a copy of Thor's hammer to transport the Triskelion and all the attacking vampires to Iran, where they burn up in the sunlight. Blade takes part in the plan, and while there would probably be some special cases left - superhuman vampires or those who were able to resist the order to join the attack - it would create a situation where he was able to wipe out any stragglers in his lifetime, especially because his powers include the ability to both sense the supernatural and smell vampires from a distance.

But what about something from the mainstream Marvel Universe? In "Vampire State," the concluding storyline of Captain Britain and MI13 -by Mike Collins, Paul Cornell, and Leonard Kirk - Blade finds himself back home in England, ready to fight back against an invasion involving Dracula's vampire nation, which he's steadily been building on the moon. The storyline is complex, involving counter-espionage and perhaps one of the most satisfying twists in comics, but it all hinges on the skull ofQuincy Harker - an artifact which ensures that any vampire who enters the United Kingdom uninvited burns up. With Blade's help, MI13 allows Dracula to destroy a fake version of the skull and then tricks him into committing all his forces at once, causing them to burn up as they enter UK air space.

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It's the exact type of tactic that Blade will need to employ to have a chance of ridding the world of vampires within his lifetime, but considering that the assembled mass was an occupying forcebeing compelled by Dracula's control, it's safe to say that it made up for Blade's earlier mistake and cut into that 120,000 total as well.

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Ultimately, Blade is capable of ridding the Marvel Universe of vampires because he lives in a world that offers up so many opportunities for mass extermination."Vampire State" shows that he's conscious of such tactics andhappy to use them, "Blade Versus the Avengers" shows there are other such techniques that the Blade of Marvel's mainstream reality hasn't even tried yet, and "Tomb of Dracula" shows that while he may be Marvel's greatest vampire hunter, there are plenty of other experts out thereworking on the same goal. Add to this his depiction in Jason Aaron's2018Avengersrun as someone with growing expertise in mystical combat and armaments, and Blade is entirely capable of wiping out every Marvel vampire. But he won't...

Though rare, Marvel's vampires have shown that in some cases, they're capable of repressing their bloodlust. Blade's relationship with Spitfire - and his agreement to spare the father of teammate Faiza Hussain, aka Excalibur, in the battle against Dracula's vampire nation - show that while it's hard to convince Eric Brooks that not every vampire has to be staked, itcanbe done. Focused on ahugeoverall goal he may be, butBladeis a Marvel hero, and that means sparing the innocent is even more important than taking down the guilty, even when they both have fangs.

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Is It Really Possible For Blade To Kill Every Single Marvel Vampire? - Screen Rant