X-Men: Curse Of The Mutants Blade #1 – Review

By Duane Swierczynski (writer), Tim Green (artist), Nathan Fairbairn (colorist)

The Story: Someone or something is killing vampire hunters all over the world, and Blade’s investigation into the matter uncovers a terrifying revelation that will change his life’s work forever.

Randomly Assorted Thoughts: Seeing as how Victor Gischler did such an amazing job asserting the role and dominance of the vampire nation in his “Death of Dracula” one shot, I was immediately curious to see how this storyline would impact Marvel’s premiere vampire hunter. What I took from this issue, oddly, was a caption from Blade towards the end of the story where, being the last man standing against Xarus and his footsoldiers, he realizes “Killing us Slayers–His prime opposition–wasn’t his endgame. Merely an item on a To-Do List.” And therein lies the crux of why this issue didn’t work for me: to a degree, it exposes how irrelevant Blade and his vampire slaying ilk have become in this brave new world where vampires can now walk and hunt in daylight. Not that Blade’s any less good at what he does, but he didn’t win his battle against Xarus in this issue as much as he barely escaped with his tail between his legs.

“Curse of the Mutants” is, obviously, a storyline tailor-made for the X-Men. There’s nothing wrong with that, and if anything I credit this storyline with bringing me back into the X-Universe, but even as I applaud what I feel it’s doing for the X-Men, I’m a bit taken back by what it’s not doing for Blade; this should have been Blade’s moment to shine, it should have been the perfect opportunity to try launching a new series for him, but he instead comes off seeming strangely fragile and inconsequential, slightly out of his league as the vampires barely pay attention to the vampire hunters and instead set their sights on the mutant populace.