Ponder the mysteries
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Events of 616

Blade by Marc Guggenheim

  • A short flashback of the vampire Deacon Frost biting Blade’s mother before he is born

  • A secret organization that specializes in the subject of vampires known as The Order of Tyrana does a threat assessment on Blade and S.H.I.E.L.D. 

  • Blade kills vampires posing as S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who are trying to reanimate Dracula who has a stake in his heart

  • He takes down a Helicarrier full of them where Dracula’s body was in

  • Files on Lucas Cross for Tyrana ae denied. He is Blade’s father

  • Cross is attempting to understand a prophecy

  • Doom tells Blade that his (Doom’s) mother saw Blade in Latveria long ago which Blade says is not possible

  • 24 hours prior, Blade is summoned to Castle Doom by Doombots

  • This is where Doom and Blade have their conversation

  • Doom tells Blade he will travel back in time to save his mother from a prison that is overrun with vampires and in return Doom will relieve Blade of his thirst for blood

  • Blade is transported back in time through Doom’s time platform and looks for Cynthia Von Doom

  • As a gypsy, she knew he was coming and they team up to take on the vampires

  • Prior to finding Cynthia he released an inmate who helped him find her. It is Lucas Cross

  • Blade returns to the present and is tempted to drink the elixir that will rid his bloodlust and lust for killing vampires

  • A flashback of Blade being trained as a vampire hunter by Jamal Afari

  • Another flashback shows a pre-teen Blade (Eric Brooks) killing a man he thought was a vampire but was really suffering from porphyria

  • Jamal tells him to leave town instead of turning himself head or the world will be deprived a vampire hunter

  • Blade is apprehended when ATM footage shows him staking a female vampire named Renee Kimbrell

  • He cannot be charged because there is no body but his fingerprints are used as evidence from all the valuables he’s taken from vampires he’s killed over the years

  • He escapes from a prison bus taking him to Ryker’s Island 

  • He becomes a public enemy and travels from town to town

  • He comes across a demon soul-jumper known as Animus who is possessing a Santa and tries possessing Blade but cannot because he has no soul

  • Animus possesses an officer and makes him blow his head off before possessing Santa again

  • Blade is forced to blow off Santa’s head, killing the man and Animus. It is Morton’s Fork: having only two choices which are both terrible

  • During the superhuman civil war, Blade scraps with Morbius who is registered and calls S.H.I.E.L.D. agents against him

  • Blade is offered immunity from S.H.I.E.L.D. as a superhuman and can continue his vampire-hunting if he brings Wolverine in DOA to S.H.I.E.L.D.

  • Blade and Wolverine meet for the first time. They fight very briefly but Blade remembers Logan saved him from a vampire when he was younger so he lets him go and tells Maria Hill

  • Lucas Cross’ people take Blade while he is sleeping and incarcerate him

  • A flashback reveals Lucas Cross creating a diversion in Latveria to allow his wife and unborn son to escape to London and take refuge in Madame Vanity’s brothel

  • Blade needs to feed on bleed so Lucas provides a girl for him but Blade refuses

  • Lucas reveals he’s Blade’s father

  • Revealed that Cross accused a Baron of being a dictator and planned to kill him which he was imprisoned for in the past

  • Blade chews his hand off to escape his chain and helps the girl escape. He finds out he’s in D.C. 

  • Cross wants to be killed by his cellmate because he has cancer anyway, but the cellmate offers him life by making him a vampire which Cross becomes

  • Blade goes to London to discover more about his father

  • Blade fights a vampire named Draconis who’s more powerful than the average vampire. He became immune to all vampire’s weaknesses because he had a strong religious faith as a human prior to being turned as well as feeding on his own kind

  • Blade and Hannibal King team up to take Draconis down, Blade manages to suck blood out of Draconis weakening him, then pulls his head off

  • As Madame Vanity, Blade’s adoptive mother, died, she told Blade his true mother had a secret. In the present, Blade opens Tara Cross’ coffin and takes a letter from her hand

  • In the letter she admits that Lucas Cross was her husband and that they are both members of the Order of Tyrana

  • Blade calls former S.H.I.E.L.D director Maria Hill about information on Tyrana and she tells him they’re linked to the Knights of Pendragon which are an offshoot of the former and connected to the WWII hero Union Jack. The current Union Jack is the 3rd version

  • Union Jack tells them the Order is good, not bad 

  • King and Blade go to D.C. where Blade talks with Lucas and distracts him long enough for King to obtain the paper with the prophecy 

  • Blade realizes that the first part of the prophecy has already been fulfilled- “A father in chains/freed by a son not yet birthed”- when Blade went back in time to Latveria

  • King and Blade go to La Crosse, KS where the Helicarrier infested with vampires that Blade took down crashed

  • King tells Blade that a nearby farmer saw dozens of government agents as well as a green/black hooded figure around the area

  • Blade goes to NYC and speaks with Spiderman who was bitten by the same green/black figure when he followed him into a school and saw him meet up with Dracula

  • Spidey reveals that that figure’s name is Jamal Afari who Blade thought dead when he had to kill him after Dracula bit him

  • Since both Lucas and Blade are looking for Dracula, they head to Transylvania together and bring Hannibal King 

  • The prophecy is supposedly supposed to return souls to all vampires and make them human again. If Blade destroys the amulet that made him immortal immortal against Draconis staking him and sticks the wooden stake that killed Dracula into the grounds of his castle, the prophecy is fulfilled

  • Hannibal fights Blade over the prophecy because Blade refuses to fulfill it and is staked in the heart and dies. Dracula appears

  • Dracula has been seeking the same amulet and resurrected Jamal Afari using the Espil Shade after his death because he knew where the Amulet was but Afari diverted Dracula to NY instead of London where it was, impressing Dracula because he resisted the power of the invoker of the Espil Shade

  • Dracula tells Blade to set the stake on the ground who refuses so Dracula hurts Jamal. Blade allows the stake to touch ground

  • Expecting a change, Lucas is shocked when nothing happens. Hannibal comes back to life and punches Blade in the face

  • “Returning essence lost from those undead in graves” made Lucas think the prophecy was talking about souls but it actually referred to lives, so every single dead vampire is resurrected 

  • Blade is forced to spare Dracula’s life and let him run after Dracula had killed his friends but spared his life many years ago

  • Blade allows Lucas to live wanting him to suffer for his mistake

  • King is upset that Blade didn’t try to destroy the stake for the sake of vampire souls when he didn’t know what would happen

  • Blade explains he didn’t want to be rid of of his bloodlust which he needs more than ever now for the resurrected vampires and gives King the potion that Dr. Doom gave him

  • Blade always reminds himself of the possessions he took from his 4 murdered friends and Jamal to honor them 


  • Blade and Wolverine find themselves fighting vampires together in Madripoor. They are a cult known as The Creed

  • Thinking they wiped the Creed out, one is left living 

  • Six months later in NYC, Wolverine kills a Mutant Liberation Front enemy, Dragoness, who he realizes had been turned into a vampire. They fight in a construction site where she was after a hidden box containing the same markings as the Temple of the Creed

  • In Von Stadt, Germany, Blade is fighting the vampire who survived known as Count Von Stadt. He surprises Blade by shooting beams out of his eyes and after Blade manages to cause the top of his castle to fall and impale him, Blade demands to know how Von Stadt got his new powers which Von Stadt refuses and burns to death by sunlight 

  • Wolverine visits Doctor Strange who tells him that of the 3 vampire congregations, only the Creed worship in a temple and worship their vampire messiah Varkis who is prophesied to bring all vampires together one day

  • Strange posits that the box contains the Khandra which is the only means to slay Varkis. Strange also knows the spell to open the box

  • A pictogram on the box reveals that Blade and Wolverine will come to blows again

  • Blade interrogates a man named Desmond about the eye beams who tells him that vampires have been turning mutants into vampires

  • He tells him about Varkis who is supposedly a mutant, so vampires have been turning mutants at every chance they get hoping that Varkis will be revealed

  • Wolverine and Blade end up in Belize at the Temple. Wolverine assumes Blade is in league with the Creed and Blade suspects Wolverine may be the vampire-mutant messiah

  • Blade and Wolverine get into a bloody battle

  • They come to realize that they thought the other was Varkis and realize they’re not after each other

  • A clone vampire Wolverine reveals himself as Varkis who was created from the flesh of Wolverine that was cut off six months ago

  • Blade and Wolverine defeat and kill Varkis by cutting him high and low. Blade detonates the temple