The half-human half-vampire hero Blade has been an integral part of the Marvel Universe recently. He was the only hero with a consistent grasp on reality in the Heroes Reborn event. And the famous vampire hunter even struck a deal with Dracula to help the Avengers fight the symbiotes in Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman's King in Black. But long before the daywalker was helping save the world from symbiotes, Blade spent his days hunting the vampire who killed his mother and turned him into a dhampir. Blade actually had to kill the evil Deacon Frost twice before he finally vanquished the villain once and for all.
Deacon Frost, who first appeared in 1973's Tomb of Dracula #13 by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan, was a mad scientist in 1860's Germany. He was trying to concoct a serum that would grant humans immortality using vampire blood. Frost abducted a woman to test his serum on, but was interrupted by the woman's fiance who broke into Frost's lab and attacked him. In the ensuing struggle, Deacon accidentally injected himself with the serum and turned into a vampire. But something about his heinous chemical brew gave him a unique power. Whenever he drank a person's blood, he created a duplicate of that person. By feeding on the döpplegangers he could create armies of identical vampire soldiers. This ability gave him a degree of power and influence that at one point rivaled Dracula himself. Over the next 100 years, Frost traveled the world, wreaking havoc and drinking the blood of the innocent.
Blade and the private eye Hannibal King, who was also turned into a vampire by Deacon Frost, eventually tracked their enemy down and confronted him in Marv Wolfman, Gene Colan and Tom Palmer's 1977 Tomb of Dracula #53. They were surprised to find themselves facing an army of their own döpplegangers. But their vampire look-a-likes lacked the fighting skills of the King and Blade, who easily dispatched hordes of their undead clones before chasing Deacon into his lair. Each of the vampire hunters hurls a wooden knife into Frost's chest killing him instantly.
Of course, by definition, the undead are notoriously difficult to dispatch. Years after Hannibal and the daywalker thought they killed Frost, he reappeared in Christopher Golden, Gene Colan and Mark Pennington's 1998 Blade: Crescent City Blues. King and Blade discovered that Deacon was running a crime family in New Orleans and extorting local businesses while building a new army of vampires. Frost abducted his two would-be assassins and would have killed them if it weren't for Brother Voodoo who came to their rescue. Blade and his allies quickly gained the upper hand, but Frost was able to escape before they could kill him again.
In 2005's Tomb of Dracula, a four-issue miniseries by Robert Rodi, Bruce Jones, Jamie Tolagson and Tom Palmer - Blade had bigger fish to fry than the man who made him a dhampir. He joined a team organized by a descendant of Van Helsing to stop Dracula from gaining more power than ever before. They fought vampires across the globe until eventually arriving in Dracula's lair. As Blade approached Dracula, he was surprised to run into Deacon Frost. Frost attacked the daywalker, but Blade bested him again, and drove another stake through his heart, finally killing Frost once and for all.
Deacon Frost gave Blade his powerful status as a half-human half-vampire and a sense of purpose. The vampire hunter's quest for vengeance propelled him through many difficult years. His hatred of Deacon formed him into the vampire killing machine he is today. Frosts lives and deaths have been as influential as they have been frightening.
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