It's bedtime for suckheads in the first part of our double episode on 1998's horror and superhero hybrid, BLADE. Wesley Snipes steps into a role he seemed born to play as the vampire killing "Daywalker" in an R-rated romp that owed just as much to martial arts and gun-fu films as it did comics. The end result was a smart, violent, over the top bloody thrill ride that was world's ahead of the campy histrionics that marked so much of the superhero fare that made its way into theaters at the time. The global success of BLADE made it possible to bring the X-Men to the silver screen just two years later and Sam Raimi's genre defining Spider-Man two years after that. 

 

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This episode Mike, Devaughn and guest Jay Krieger (from the Genre Haze podcast) breakdown the publication history of Marvel's premier vampire slayer, and discuss the vastly different state superhero films were in during the late 90s compared to the present day. Plus, we talk the early days of Marvel Studios and their attempts to crawl out of bankruptcy and get their comic book heroes off the funny book pages and onto the big screen.