Channel Surfing: Blade

Welcome to the first post in a new section of my blog! This is Channel Surfing, where I take a little time to talk about the current week's offerings in comic book tv shows!

In the coming months, this section will explode with information about the monumental "DC Nation" and "Marvel Universe" blocks that are starting up, but in the mean-time you'll have to quench your thirst with the current Blade show that airs every Friday on G4.

Reviewed: Blade, Ep. 4: That Was Then, This Is Now

I'll be honest, I've never read Blade. My first exposure to him was in the 1994 Spider-Man cartoon, where they would team up from time to time to fight Morbius. And then the movie came out, and basically Wesley Snipes IS Blade to me. There is no replacement. But that bias aside, I can still safely say that this show isn't exactly living up to expectations.

The forward plot of this episode is basically a rescue mission. Blade and Makoto arrive in the Phillipines to rescue Van Helsing. With that out of the way, Hellsing exits the show for some reason, and the other two are free to team up to go after Deacon Frost.

That's only half the story though. Most of the episode (thankfully) is taken up with a rather well done flashback to when Blade was a child. It shows him having to make the hardest decision of his life, killing his vampiric mother. It's very tragic and telling of what made Blade the character he is. It's also clearly the better part of the episode.

That's really the problem though. The main plot, in present day, is surprisingly uninteresting. I'm not one of the throngs of people that find Makoto grating, but she's not bringing much to the table either. And the enemies have mostly been piss-poor. One of the inherent problems with the show is that they made all normal vampires mere cannon fodder to up the badass level of Blade and Makoto. They come in with Uzi's loaded with silver bullets and down an entire room of vamps without batting an eye, it's ridiculous.

This, of course, means that the main character now has no challenge, and that's definitely a problem in story-telling. So they came up with all these "special breeds" of vampires, and most of them are not very well designed. It does bring an air of variety though, so that's something.

And now for the art. From a technical stand-point, it's great. Its slick and smooth. Madhouse has always been good at their jobs. But it just doesn't fit in with the style of Blade. It would have been far more fitting to go with a darker vibe for a character like Blade, a la Vampire Hunter D. As it stands now, it's just too clean.

And this is nitpicking here, but Blade isn't black enough. He's barely darker than the other characters, who are supposed to be Japanese.

All in all, it's probably the best episode of Blade yet. But that isn't saying much. If they can give the rest of the show the same amount of gravitas as the flashbacks, we may have something here. But I doubt it's going to happen.

Was it so bad I want my 19 minutes back? No. Should you be spending your time watching something else? Yeah, pretty much. Go watch Blade I & II again. Now there's a good time.