Eric BrooksBlade

There are many men and women in the world who hunt vampires, but few strike as much fear into bloodsucking hearts as they do stakes. Blade is more than just a slayer of the undead, but a boogeyman’s boogeyman, the thing that makes ghouls and monsters lose sleep.

Born from a mother ravaged by vampirism and gifted super human abilities by a bite from Morbius, the Living Vampire, Blade is the Daywalker—a skilled martial artist who possesses most vampire strengths and none of their weaknesses. His life is the tireless pursuit of eradicating the world of the beasts who seek to destroy innocent life.

A Tragic Beginning

Blade, born Eric Brooks, came from complicated beginnings. His father was Lucas Cross, a member of the Order of Tyrana, an ancient secret society. Cross was held captive in Latveria when his lover Tara was pregnant with his son, so he gave her explicit instructions to flee to England and gain shelter from fellow Order member Madame Vanity. There, Tara took the last name Brooks, but encountered complications with her pregnancy, seeking out a man who claimed to be a doctor for assistance. The supposed physician, Deacon Frost, turned out to be a vampire who fed on Tara as she gave birth, transferring certain enzymes into the baby’s bloodstream.

Eric was raised in Madame Vanity’s brothel as an orphan, poisoned by the vampire’s kiss but not yet fully turned. As a child, he encountered a figure who would change his life. Brooks threw himself in a melee of vampires attacking an old man, who turned out to be Jamal Afar, a jazz trumpeter and professional enemy of the undead. Afar took the youth under his wing, training him to be the ultimate killing machine. Years later, Brooks would accidentally murder an innocent man while on patrol, causing Afar and Madame Vanity to send him to New York to join a Tyriana gang called the Bloodshadows. Eric would wrest control of the group from their leader, then bring his new allies back with him to England as his personal vampire fighting force.

He had also stolen away the ousted Bloodshadows leader’s girlfriend, Glory, but when a vampire called Lamia turned his lover, Brooks had to slay them both, rededicating himself to the mission at hand rather than interpersonal relationships. The final tragedy that led Eric to become the man he was destined to be came when Dracula himself turned Brooks’ mentor Afar, leaving the protege to kill the man who helped him when no one else would. His lust for getting revenge on Dracula led Brooks to China, where he joined up with Orji Jones’ crew of vampire hunters, among them Azu M’Dammen, Musenda and Ogun Strong. The group began to call him Blade, thanks to his proficiency with bladed weapons. When the team finally found Dracula, the dark lord killed nearly every one of them, purposely sparing Brooks’ life so that sometime in the future his foe would be honor bound to return the favor. Musenda also survived, but retired from the hunt. To honor his fallen comrades, Brooks kept the name Blade, and incorporated elements of each man into his equipment and regular attire, including Afar’s trademark shades, finally becoming the legendary and infamous vampire hunter.

Supernatural Skills

Blade possesses all of a vampire’s strengths without their weaknesses. He has superhuman strength, stamina, and senses, as well as an accelerated healing factor, but is impervious to sunlight and vampire bites. In addition to his supernatural abilities, he’s also an incredibly skilled fighter. Blade is a master of most martial arts with a particular proficiency with weapons, namely swords and daggers.

Ravenous Rivals

In his career as an enemy to the dark occult, Blade has battled nearly every formidable bloodsucker there is, from Dracula himself, to Morbius The Living Vampire, to the immortal who cursed him in the first place, Deacon Frost. He’s also fought Baron Blood, Blackout, and countless other creatures of the night.

Trusted Teammates

Throughout his long life, Blade has often been a loner, trusting only himself in his lifelong quest, but he has had his fair share of allies. From his early days learning under Jamal Afari and teaming with Noah Van Helsing’s vampire hunters, to his later runnings with Hannibal King and the Nightstalkers, and even his dalliances with the Midnight Sons, he’s proven to be as capable a compatriot as he is a lone warrior. In more recent years, he’s also been affiliated with MI:13 and the Mighty Avengers.

Daywalker's Journey Into Night

Blade spent the beginning of his personal crusade alone before attracting the attention of Quincy Harker, a fellow vampire hunter whose old school methods frustrated his new ally. At first, their difference in styles proved to be more evidence that Blade worked best alone, but after failing to best Dracula solo, he began to respect the utility of working with like-minded individuals. Teaming up with Frank Drake, Rachel van Helsing, Taj Nital and Harker, Blade was able to track Dracula successfully, where he staked his nemesis, who still managed to survive. In their next encounter, Dracula bit his opponent's throat, leaving him to turn, but Blade healed from the wound, discovering as a result that he was immune to vampirism, due to his unique biology.

This new knowledge inspired Blade to leave Harker’s group to hunt down his mother’s killer, Deacon Frost. His quest was sidetracked when Madame Vanity, his surrogate matriarch, was killed by the Legion of the Damned, a cult of vampires led by Marguerite D’Alescio, one of Dracula’s human agents. Blade had to work closely with Inspector Kate Fraser to find the Legion and stop them from creating the Sunlight Serum, a chemical compound that would allow vampires to walk in the daytime. In addition to besting the Legion, Blade saved his lover Saffron Caulder and retrieved taped evidence that cleared his name of multiple fake charges the vampires had framed him up for. Later, Blade’s search for Frost would take him to Boston, where he found Harker’s team working side by side with Dracula himself.

Blade, initially disgusted by this development, had no choice but to join up with this uneasy alliance in order to bring down a greater threat, the villainous Dr. Sun. During the ensuing battle, Blade caught a glimpse of Frost and had to abandon Harker and company to pursue his personal mission. This is when Blade first met Hannibal King, a private eye Frost had turned into a vampire. The two men didn’t have much love for one another, but were united by their common thirst to end Frost. Pooling their resources, the two were able to find Frost and destroy him in a climactic explosion.

Quincy Harker’s death led to his group of hunters to drift apart, but Rachel van Helsing had been turned into a vampire by Dracula before being destroyed by, of all people, Wolverine. After this, Blade, Drake and King worked with Dr. Strange to cast a spell he called the Montesi Formula, which seemed to destroy all the vampires left on Earth. With no bloodsuckers to slay, the three men formed Borderline Investigations, but the agency was short lived, both due to financial issues and the partners’ inability to get along. After their formal partnership's dissolution, Drake needed Blade’s help with a personal matter. His new wife, Marlene McKenna, had her spirit fused with the deceased Rachel van Helsing by Gregor Smirnoff, a demonologist who sacrificed scores of college kids in the cult called the Belonging to amplify Dracula’s power. Dracula had been revived by the demon Asmodeus, so Blade used Marlene as bait to lure him out.

This confrontation with Dracula broke Blade, who, badly beaten, had a mental breakdown. Dracula’s return, coupled with the existence of Dr. Strange’s vampire brother Victor Strange, weakened the Montesi Formula. Blade’s madness became a danger to those around him, as he became convinced his friends were standing between him and defeating Dracula. Drake had Blade temporarily institutionalized, but it was ultimately another kind of healer who helped him recover, as Dr. Strange mystically transmuted Blade’s hyper-specific hatred of vampires into a more general distaste for the occult. This was not an entirely altruistic development from the good doctor, as Strange knew Blade and his allies were destined to aid in thwarting the demon mother, Lilith.

With his new outlook on life, Blade re-teamed with Drake and King as the Nightstalkers. Soon, the trio was hired by Lilith herself to attack the Ghost Rider (Danny Ketch) and Johnny Blaze, with the two men framed as threats to humanity. Blade threw himself into the new business, so eager to destroy the mystical world, but their activities caught the eye of DOA, the Department of Occult Armaments, a Hydra division led by Lieutenant Gregory Belial. This new alliance was tested when Blade almost sacrificed Drake to DOA but ultimately came to his senses, putting his life on the line to save his partner.

Next, the Nightstalkers helped the Punisher, who was caught in a mystical war between Shiv and Adam Casim. Blade then found himself in conflict with Morbius who was trying like hell to find a way to end his pseudo-vampiric existence, which brought the two into contact with an ancient alchemist named Stonecold and his vampire ally, Vic Slaughter. Dr. Strange’s magical mental health help hadn’t done much to moderate Blade’s personality, as his thirst to destroy the occult was just as self destructive as his former quest for vampire vengeance. His rage still kept him dangerously close to harming innocents while trying to do what he considered to be the right thing. Blade used a page from the cursed Darkhold to become the living embodiment of the Demogorge, a mystically powerful being who had driven the Elder Gods from Earth. Blade hoped this new power would help him wipe out all supernatural beings. He had no intention of harming anyone without mystic abilities, but he hunted many he once called compatriots.

Calling himself Switchblade to further distance himself from his pre-Demogorge existence, Blade went after the Midnight Sons, a loose-knit group of mystically abled individuals that included his former teammates the Nightstalkers, destroying them all one by one. Eventually, the spell was disrupted by Darkhold Redeemer Louise Hastings, who sacrificed her own soul to return Blade to his previous status quo. The damage he wrought was undone, but not erased from his memory. Wracked with guilt about how far his quest had pushed him, Blade used a mystical knife known as the Edge of Intrados to summon and revisit visions of his life. He finally began to see how dangerous he was when ruled by his obsessions, forging forward with a new perspective on his purpose.

A battle with the child of Lilith known as Short-Circuit soon followed and the growing rift between King and Blade was seemingly set aside forever, as the latter swore to prevent Hannibal from ever losing control of his vampiric self. Unfortunately, the Montesi Formula had begun to weaken. Varnae, the original Lord of Vampires, returned to life and Hydra created a Dracula clone called Bloodstorm. Dracula’s wife, Domini, came seeking aid to retrieve her kidnapped son, Janus. While the rest of the Nightstalkers embarked on a plan to track down Bloodstorm, Blade took on the task of finding Janus. His investigation led him to Kennedy Airport where the man behind the kidnapping was boarding a plane headed to New Delhi. Blade’s heart was broken when he discovered that his old ally, Taj Nital, had been transformed into a vampire and was now serving Varnae, who had orchestrated the abduction.

During a massive struggle between Varnae, Bloodstorm and the Nightstalkers, all save Blade were seemingly annihilated. Blade felt extreme guilt over the fact that his only friends were now dead, leaving him to carry on his war alone. He swore to continue the search for Janus, but never found the child, who resurfaced transformed some time later. He soon acquired a new ally in Bible John Carik, a member of the mystical Cathari sect, guardian of an ancient mystical library. Alongside Carik, Blade battled a strangely reborn Dracula and a false Deacon Frost. He also attempted to forge a normal life for himself outside of vampire hunting. Befriending a woman named Julia Suarez, he rented an apartment from her under the name Frank Blade. He clashed with Marie Laveau, Steppin’ Razor and Night Terror while the trio was reviving Varnae once more. Blade’s spirit briefly traveled back in time, experiencing the life of 17th-century vampire hunter Jonas Cray. Laveau later sent her agents, the Vampz, to kill Bible John, but Blade once more halted her plans.

Meanwhile, Carik’s visions of Hannibal King and Frank Drake eventually culminated in the revelation that the two men had somehow merged with Bloodstorm to form this new Dracula. Carik, Blade and a future version of Blade known as Crossbow were instrumental in helping King and Drake return from this state, though Dracula’s true soul retained possession of the body they had once shared. Blade was soon summoned to New Orleans by the enigmatic beauty Dominique Levant, who led him into the midst of a vampiric coup of sorts involving the living vampire Morbius and the powerful Ulysses Sojourner. Sojourner sought to unify all vampires on the East Coast, but Blade halted the scheme. Remaining active in New Orleans, Blade teamed with Brother Voodoo to thwart Marie Laveau and Deacon Frost’s attempts to build an undead army. Later, Blade and Spider-Man encountered the vampire Henry Sage and learned of the development of the Daywalker formula, an evolution of the Sunlight Serum.

Continuing to refine his techniques and equipment, Blade helped Spider-Man try to capture their former ally Morbius, who had fallen under the sway of a vampire known as the Hunger. During their confrontation, Morbius bit Blade, who soon realized that his blood enzymes were not enough to protect him from his foe's unique form of vampirism. Though allegedly a daywalker since birth, Blade now transformed fully into the thing he hated most, manifesting vampiric fangs and a bloodthirst.

Not long after this Blade was captured by Silvereye, a S.H.I.E.L.D. sect devoted to developing its own cadre of vampire soldiers. The Silvereye division was partially a front for a scheme engineered by Darius Venginian, a vampire who sought to gain political power in the USA. He also sought to program Blade into becoming a Silvereye pawn, but this plan failed when the vampire hunter broke free of his programming with the aid of twins Mosha and Mikado. The siblings aided Blade against Silvereye, as well as the vampiric demon known as the Reaper (Gracul), summoned by one of the Ancient Saracen. Misha and Mokado accompanied Blade when he fled the scene, swearing to have nothing more to do with S.H.I.E.L.D. in the future. Blade’s partnership with the twins was brief, and he was alone again when he faced a terrifying breed of multi-stage vampires known as the Tryks.

Blade found himself thrust into a complex conspiracy when his father reemerged, having become a vampire ages ago while in Latveria in order to save himself from a terminal disease in hopes of one day reuniting with his wife and son. Still working with the Order of Tyrana, Lucas Cross hoped to set in motion a prophecy concerning his son which hinted that vampires could regain their souls. Allied with Cross, Dracula, revived the vampiric Jamal Afari from the grave. Afari and Dracula clashed with Spider-Man, with the former biting the Wallcrawler, briefly granting him vampiric powers. Blade appeared and bested Spider-Man then slew Dracula again. He was unaware of Afari’s involvement, instead distracted when a team of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents altered into vampires attempted to revive Dracula aboard the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier; Blade destroyed the entire craft to be rid of his enemies.

Blade was recruited by Dr. Doom to go on a time travel mission and rescue his mother, Cynthia von Doom, from prison while she was pregnant with her son; during his trip to the past, Blade released Lucas Cross from a Latverian jail, unaware the man was his father. When Blade returned to the present, Doom rewarded him by giving him a potion that he claimed could cure him of his bloodlust; the daywalker was uncertain that he wanted to use it, but kept the potion nonetheless.

As the superhumans of the United States were forced to sign the Superhuman Registration Act (SHRA), Blade found himself among those confronted by S.H.I.E.L.D. forces. He willingly submitted to the new law, seeing value in being able to leech S.H.I.E.L.D. resources for his own means.

Lucas finally revealed himself to Blade by chaining him and placing him in a cell with a girl; the captive vampire hunter’s manacles were long enough to reach his fellow inmate, but not the door. Lucas hoped that his captive would feed on her to fulfill part of the prophecy, which said his son would feed on virgin blood, but Blade surprised him by instead gnawing off his right hand to remove the manacle. Blade escaped Lucas, and soon found himself up against Draconis, a vampire who had rendered himself invulnerable to most traditional forms of destruction. Draconis seemingly slew Blade in their first clash, but our hero found that an amulet he had earlier taken from a vampire rendered whoever bore it immune to being staked.

Recruiting Hannibal King’s help, Blade was able to finally slay Draconis, biting him in the process — and thus inadvertently fulfilling the prophecy that he would taste virgin blood. Blade had S.H.I.E.L.D. provide him with a specialized gun to replace his missing right hand. Blade and King investigated the Order of Tyrana, looking up Union Jack (Joey Chapman) because his fellow Knights of Pendragon were affiliated with the Order. Blade was stunned to learn that the Order was supposedly heroes. Continuing his investigation, he went back to Spider-Man and learned that it was Afari who had vamped the web-slinger before. Finally, Blade and King confronted Lucas, and learned what their goals were. Lucas brought them to Castle Dracula where he challenged Blade to release a splinter from the stake he had used on Dracula earlier on to the ground, and thus fulfill the prophecy.

When Blade refused, King turned on him, wanting to regain his soul. Blade was forced to kill King and then battle Lucas and Dracula. During the clash, the splinter finally touched the ground, but instead of restoring souls to vampires it brought vampires back to life — including King, and virtually every other bloodsucker on the planet. Apologizing to King for having killed him earlier, Blade gave him the anti-bloodlust potion he had won from Doom. Blade now had more need of his bloodlust than ever, with the vampire population at an all-time high.

Later, Blade spent a brief period of time working for Vanguard, a secret black-ops team of Super Heroes who executed missions on foreign soil. After the Skrull invasion, Blade joined up with the British MI:13, as there had been a resurgence in evil forces in his homeland after the alien race’s defeat. He initially had some difficulty fitting in, after attempting to kill teammate Spitfire, who was part-vampire, but the two eventually settled their differences and, oddly enough, became romantically involved. His time with MI:13 involved battling Legion, being mind controlled by Nightmare and forced to battle Brother Voodoo, and of course, crossing paths with old nemesis Dracula.

Blade would later team up with the X-Men in a fight with Dracula’s son Xarus, who sought to unite all the vampire sects in the world. He proved a worthy comrade in their fight, though ruffling some feathers with Wolverine after suggesting the team just put Jubilee, then a vampire, out of her misery. The disagreement was water under the bridge, as Wolverine later brought Blade to the Jean Grey School For Higher Learning to teach a class on vampire hunting. Not long after, Blade was kidnapped by familiar X-villain Mojo to take part in a new reality series, Avengers of The Supernatural, forced to battle with other mystical heroes for the corpulent producer’s entertainment.

Most recently, Blade became an unofficial member of the Mighty Avengers, at the behest of Spectrum (Monica Rambeau), where he posed under the guise of Ronin in order to work without being discovered by his various foes.