Blood Hunt: Red Band #1 - Marvel Comics

BLOOD HUNT: RED BAND No. 1, July 2024

Touted by its New York City-based publisher as “the bloodiest Marvel event ever”, Jed MacKay’s storyline for Issue One of “Blood Hunt” definitely lives up to its promise of vampires slaughtering nearly everyone that they can get their sinisterly sharp claws on. Indeed, whilst many a bibliophile might feel the comic’s ‘explicit content’ sealed polythene bag and repeated ‘mature reader only’ warnings are rather gimmicky, this thirty-two page extravaganza soon causes its audience to be up to their necks in severed limbs, torn-off heads, spilling intestines and literal rivers of icky human ichor.

Furthermore, for those onlookers able to withstand such a stomach-churning assault upon their senses, the Canadian author arguably leaves the best until almost last, by pitching the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes against the “mysterious and deadly vampire faction” known as the Bloodcoven. This battle is as brutal as it is (perhaps somewhat) disappointingly one-sided, with the likes of Iron Man, Vision, Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Scarlet Witch, Thor and Captain America all getting their proverbial clocks cleaned by a strike force specifically designed to exploit each hero’s unique set of vulnerabilities; “Or was a match, I guess. This isn’t conjecture. The Avengers are down.”

However, it isn’t arguably the notion that Stan Lee’s co-creations are soundly defeated which comes as such a surprise. But rather the truly gruesome manner in which it all occurs. Whether it be as a result of a thousand cuts, a crystalline shaft straight through the brain, or a hand tunnelling its way through the stomach, these close combat conclusions are shockingly savage, and jam-packed full of gore-drenched innards. In fact, it’s probably difficult for long-term Marvelites to recall so much physical mutilation being on show this side of a “MAX Comics” imprint – at least until the attention shifts to Doctor Stephen Strange’s horrific evisceration at the publication’s conclusion.

Also presumably being constantly peppered by MacKay to add extra buckets of blood into his prodigious pencilling is Pepe Larraz, who does a stellar job of depicting the sheer scale of the voracious blood-drinkers’ assault across the world. Of particular note is the Spanish artist’s design work on the super-vampires, with Jed himself going on record to state it was the illustrator “who really brought these characters to (un)life, creating an extremely gnarly set of predators!”

The regular cover art to "BLOOD HUNT" #1 by Pepe Larraz & Marte Gracia