Customer Reviews

Blade: Black & White TPB

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I certainly don't feel that BLADE: BLACK AND WHITE is a must-have, as it costs the same as a Marvel Essential with only 1/4 of the page count. It's just a handful of random stories from throughout Blade's vampire-hunting career, unnecessarily reprinted on glossy paper. It's a nice supplement, however, for all the fans who have been going crazy over Marvel's thorough reprinting of Tomb of Dracula in the Essential format.

This book collects black and white material from VAMPIRE TALES #8-9, MARVEL PREVIEW #3 and #6, BLADE: CRESCENT CITY BLUES #1, and MARVEL SHADOWS AND LIGHT #1. For the most part, the stories are general Marvel horror fare: flimsy plots with lead characters who babble incessantly while fighting legions of the undead (and even remarking to themselves that they do it!). The Crescent City Blues story does improve on this a bit, even taking a dig at those earlier stories, but even this one runs low on steam towards the end. But still, as with any Marvel horror comic, the real star is the art, and BLADE: BLACK AND WHITE has impressive art galore: Tony deZuniga's textured fine-line, Jose Ladronn's weird Kirby/Giffen amalgam, and of course, the ultimate Dracula artist Gene Colan, who provides his always beautiful art for two stories, plus the cover. The work of Gene Colan is always worth the price of admission, but I'd say that this book is for TOD fans only.

I must strongly disagree with the other two reviews, as I found this book an excellent collection of some of the best Blade stories. The first 3 comics in the collection tells an awesome tale of Blade fighting the Legion, a vampiric cult centered in London. The art and storytelling is spellbinding and the B & W printing on glossy paper only adds to the aesthetic. I actually prefer the old school portrayal of Blade to the over-the-top Wesley Snipes version, and this collection shows him in his glory days.

Blade: Black and White is a compilation of early appearances of you guessed it: Blade. We is a globetrodder, who is quiet the lemon (thats a 70's joke see Wikipedia). Ok, sorry thats like this is an opinion. I think that the movie version of Blade is allot more interesting than the source material. I hear that efforts have been made to make Blade more appealing in the pages of Captain Britain and MI13, but I digress. The artwork is beautiful, but the action and storytelling is wooden. It is cheaper than buying a new comic at $3.99, Hence 3 out of 5 for art and economy.