Midnight Suns: Blood Hunt #3 - Marvel Comics

MIDNIGHT SONS: BLOOD HUNT No. 3, September 2024

It’s probably a fair bet that many a reader was rather disappointed with Bryan Hill’s script for Issue Three of “Midnight Sons: Blood Hunt”, considering that the vampireless comic doesn’t contain any sort of showdown between Blade and his former comrades whatsoever. In fact, up until this twenty-page periodical’s conclusion – which frankly feels like a bolt-on when the American author realised his ‘play by the numbers’ plot was going to fall significantly short - there’s not even a glimpse of Eric Brook’s sword-slashing alter-ego to be found despite its publisher’s pre-print solicitation promise to the contrary.

Instead, any bibliophiles picking this mini-series’ final instalment up will be faced with the “now (mostly) banded together” titular characters disconcertingly confronting a demonic clown in an Illinois hospital. Admittedly, this bemusing twist definitely contains a few terrifying scenes as Danny Ketch, Vicki Montesi and Johnny Blaze all appear to abandon a local nurse to a gruesome fate (possibly worse than death). But such is the team's confidence to trounce the worm-infested walking cadaver that the storytelling quickly becomes almost sedentary once it becomes clear that the petrified health worker was simply being used as bait; “You are bound. Embodiment of darkness. Bound in this form. And once banished, never shall you return.”

Furthermore, for some utterly bizarre reason Tamlyn Hamato seems to leave the paranormal super-heroes to the battle by ‘exiting stage left’ just as the fearsome fight begins. This baffling departure ‘off-screen’ debatably makes a complete mockery of just why Tulip was brought into the book in the first place, as the three devil-hunting comrades-in-arms all seemed perfectly willing to be drawn together without her influence anyway. Indeed, somewhat uncharitably, the Chicago-born screenwriter could be criticised for including the Japanese arms dealer simply so he could pointlessly pen her walking the sun-drenched streets of Chiang Mai, Thailand some “weeks after the defeat of Varnae and his blood hunt” and finding a heavily-bearded Blade.

Possibly just as perturbed by this bizarre sequence of events as the audience is German Peralta, who pencils some rather lack-lustre, lifeless panels depicting Montesi trying the convince Julie that she needs to face her greatest fear so it can physically manifest itself in our dimension. Some of the illustrator’s panels genuinely look like reused sketches from earlier in the layouts (or even page), and debatably lack a lot of dynamic energy any onlooker might expect from a frightful undead fun-fair attraction stalking the living.

The regular cover art to "MIDNIGHT SONS: BLOOD HUNT" #3 by Ken Lashley & Juan Fernandez