Blood Hunt: Red Band #4 - Marvel Comics

BLOOD HUNT: RED BAND No. 4, August 2024

Arguably crammed full of more surprises than those found inside presents sat around a Christmas Tree, Jed MacKay’s narrative for Issue Four of “Blood Hunt” surely must have caused a few gasps of amazement in its audience – especially from those readers who had been struggling to keep up with the plethora of tie-in publications which separates this edition from its predecessor. Indeed, straight from the comic’s start events have clearly moved on somewhat since Blade miraculously slammed the Temple of the First Blasphemy smack into the middle of New York City, with both Stephen Strange and his wife Cleo shockingly appearing ‘cap-in-hand’ before Doctor Victor Von Doom in Doomstadt, Latveria.

To further confound and befuddle the readers’ senses though, within a handful of panels it is revealed that Eric Brooks is not in fact the traitor this unwholesome event has portrayed the Avenger to be. But has disconcertingly been possessed by Varnae, the first vampire ever to walk the planet. Such an admission is probably not too great a surprise to those bibliophiles more familiar with the Dhampir’s usual preference to stake any blood-drinker in sight. But the notion that “one who has survived the death of continents” intends to use the Daywalker as a vessel so he can merge with “an entire dimension of darkness” is impressively grandiose in design if nothing else.

Likewise the sub-plot of Hunter’s Moon teaming up with Tigra and the super-villainous Wrecker so as to free Khonshu from his prison on Asgard proves to be a real eye-opener. The resultant hordes of mummified “dead fists” pitching themselves headlong against every vampire across the globe is pulse-poundingly penned, and probably the stuff fans of the old Hammer House of Horror movies would die for; especially when the Moon God decides to seemingly also resurrect Marc Spector’s crime-fighting alter-ego simultaneously.

More than helping to sell all these story threads are Pepe Larraz and colour artist Marte Gracia, who together manage to imbue all the lead characters with the solemness or sparks of indignation an onlooker would expect from those living through such cataclysmic times. In fact, one of this comic’s best moments comes when Doctor Doom makes it clear to a truly startled Master Of The Mystic Arts that he had already foreseen the vampire’s planetwide upheaval, and taken plenty of steps to ensure his dictatorship was not affected by it; “Ah, the Darkforce. I have precautions for that as well, of course. It was only a matter of time, after all.”

The regular cover art to "BLOOD HUNT" #4 by Pepe Larraz & Marte Gracia