Blade Makes His Avengers Debut

The vampire hunter Blade just made his official Avengers debut.

SPOILERS for Avengers #12 by Jason Aaron, Ed McGuinness, and Cory Smith follow.

Marvel has been teasing Blade joining the Avengers for months. In Avengers #10, original Wasp Janet Van Dyne went on a mission to rescue Blade from a dungeon in Transylvania. Solicitations for future issues of Avengers teased that Earth's Mightiest Heroes would soon be dealing with a vampire civil war. The solicitation also teased that the Avengers would be adding a new member to their roster.

Who better to help the Avengers deal with a vampire crisis than the Marvel Universe's preeminent vampire hunter? In Avengers #12, Avengers chairman Black Panther calls a team meeting to discuss several ongoing threats needing their attention. One is the growing threat posed by Namor and his Defenders of the Deep. For now, the team chooses to focus on what's happening in Transylvania. A mysterious leader known as the Shadow Colonel has formed a new faction. He and his allies are attempting to dethrone Dracula as ruler of the vampires.

To prevent this vampire civil war from spreading and costing many innocent lives, Black Panther suggests adding Blade to the team.

"What the man is trying to say is...I'm Blade," Blade says by way of introduction. "I'm the new Avenger. And we've all got a whole lotta vampires to kill."

Take a look below.

Blade is taking the spot on the team vacated by Doctor Strange. When Jason Aaron was announced as the new Avengers writer, he made clear that the eighth spot on the Avengers roster would be a rotating one.

"We wanted to get back to a small, core lineup. With big, iconic characters at the heart of that," Aaron said. "So we get Steve, Tony, and Thor Odinson back together at the heart of this new team, and the rest of the team we build around them over the course of the first arc. My aim with this series is basically, if you only read one Marvel comic -- not that you should read just one Marvel comic, but if you did -- if you picked this book up, this would show you the landscape of the Marvel universe issue after issue. We want to feature the biggest characters and go to the coolest, most exotic locations around the Marvel U."

Are you excited to see Blade join the Avengers? Let us know in the comments!

Avengers #12 is on sale now.