Blood Hunters #3 - Marvel Comics

BLOOD HUNTERS No. 3, December 2024

Almost stupefyingly crammed full of sense-shattering action, mesmerising feats of demonic magic, and arguably more gore than you’ll ordinarily find in an “Rated T+” title, Erica Schultz’s storyline for Issue Three of “Blood Hunters” quite literally grabs its readers in an unbreakable neck hold and hammers them through an army of ravenous, mass-murdering revenants. Furthermore, the comic’s twenty-page plot does a terrific job in demonstrating just how deadly an opponent the villainous Bloodcoven can be when they’re not directly tackling the “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes” toe-to-toe, but rather a dysfunctional collection of the Marvel Universe’s more lower tiered crime-fighters.

Indeed, even “a vampirized Spider-Man” appears to be well out of his depth facing off against the likes of Cruel and a seemingly unstoppable horde of blood-drinking thralls, with only Hallows' Eve providing the titular team with any hope of victory whatsoever. Disappointingly, even this glimmer of light is eventually dimmed though, with long-time vigilante Dagger appearing to be the group’s surprising weak link, and so badly succumbing to the relentless undead assault surrounding her that she soon requires immediate medical treatment; “There’s a hospital twelve blocks away. I can swing her there fast.”

Fortunately, the decision to have poor Tandy Bowen’s brightly costumed alter-ego play the ‘patsy’ as opposed to non-powered White Widow, is easily overlooked in the face of the sheer carnage on show throughout this book, and many a bibliophile will doubtless have been physically worn out by the time Janine Godbe’s highly thematic bag of tricks sensationally brings the vampire army she is facing to a sudden, shocking end. Enjoyably however, this moment is simply the quiet before a (second) storm, with Miles Morales soon finding himself getting brutalised atop a New York apartment block whilst trying to protect a comatose Dagger.

Definitely providing all these pulse-pounding panels with plenty of dynamic life and “Wham” are Robert Gill’s pencils, which do a first-rate job in imbuing every blow with bone-breaking realism. In addition, the Billerica-born illustrator somehow manages to turn even the vampire cat Moggy into a believable combatant by sketching the stray animal doing its level best to outmanoeuvre Cruel’s tendril-like barbed wire projections.

The regular cover art of "BLOOD HUNTERS" #3 by Ema Lupacchino & Guru-eFX