Warning: Spoilers for Avengers: Beyond #2!Marvel’s latest twist on a classic vampire trope explains why Blade is such a great fighter. Blade is in the fight of his life in Avengers: Beyond thanks to the return of the Beyonder. A major domino effect pits the Avengers against the citizens of New York as New Yorkers are transformed, gaining both superpowers and a bloodthirst that causes them to attack anyone within an arm’s length of them.
The start of Avengers: Beyond #2 by Derek Landy and Greg Land sees the returning Secret Wars villain the Beyonder monologuing, narrating about how no one knows about inner battles better than Blade. “The impulses that drive this man, the insatiable thirst for blood that he barely keeps at bay…it only serves to make Blade sharper.” This suggests that whatever resistance or maybe even rage he harbors from keeping his bloody desires dormant is what motivates him in fights. This inner struggle is perhaps what drives him to fight his hardest, dishing out his frustrations on whoever is in front of him.
Blade’s Urge to Feed Helps Him Fight
It is common in vampire stories for a supposedly “good” vampire who is driven to push harder into doing good deeds based on their resistance to feed on humans. Take Angel for example, in both the Buffy show and the comics. Angel is typically driven by the guilt stemming from his evil actions from the past and his resistance to feeding on people. However, that same resistance does not make Angel a better fighter, nor does it necessarily drive him to fight.
A Good Vampire Makes For A Good Warrior
The opposite appears to be the case for Blade, at least according to the Beyonder. The all-powerful Beyonder theorizes that the harder that Blade resists the urge to feed on humans and their blood, the harder that he fights when the time comes to do so. He is not driven so much by a desire to do good, but more so driven to dish out whatever kind of aggression he has inside of him whenever he resists what he needs to survive.
Call it pent-up anger or call it inner pain and frustration from resistance, but whatever it is, Blade gets to dish it out on whoever is brazen enough to get in a fight with him. This seems like a fun twist that fits the superhero mold, that holding back that urge makes the day-walking vampire Blade one of the best fighters in the Marvel Universe.
Avengers Beyond #2 is available now from Marvel Comics.
This story originally appeared on Screenrant
