Marvel Introduces Brand-New Team of Villains in Blood Hunt

Marvel’s upcoming vampire event, Blood Hunt, introduces a brand-new vampire team.

Throughout the past couple of weeks, fans have learned a great deal about Jed MacKay and Pepe Larraz’s Blood Hunt. And, now, the mysterious identities of the villains behind the dark twisted event have been revealed. As announced in a press release from Marvel, a new team of supervillains called the Bloodcoven. The team is comprised of six vampires – Cruel, Smoke Eater, Damascene, Megrim, Unusual and Bloodstorm One.

Blood Hunt’s artist, Larraz, offers detailed descriptions of these new characters. Beginning with Cruel, he said, “This one was pretty straightforward. A character wrapped in razor wire by his own will is terrifying enough, so that is what I did. I added the cloud of wires at his feet and neck, always moving like some kind of metal gorgon.” And, according to Larraz, Megrim is “probably the most vampire-looking of the litter. I hid her face on red cloth but my idea is that the cloth was always drenched in blood. The skirt’s folds make shapes like faces screaming of pain. Everything is super intense with her. She must be unbearable.”

The artist went on to explain his vision for Damascene, stating, “My initial idea was to make them bi-dimensional, like a paper sheet that will cut you when you try to grab it, but it was very difficult to convey that idea in comics, without movement. So I did his body absolutely geometrical to remark the sharpness of the body. Again, I decided to put no face. Expressionless beings are more scary, in my opinion.”

Larraz also spoke out about Smoke Eater’s powers. “The idea is that he inhales ghosts to acquire their strength in combat, so I made a physical representation of that. He becomes the unification of multiple beings, therefore the multiple limbs, which makes his silhouette pretty recognizable in battle scenes, and makes him one of the heavy hitters of the team. The idea is that he shows all the eyes of the ghosts on his forehead. I have a thing with eyes—on my designs, I either put none or too many,” he said.

Written by JED MACKAY Art and Cover by PEPE LARRAZ Colors by MARTE GRACIA On Sale 5/1

Larraz revealed MacKay’s role behind the creation of Unusual. “The initial idea by Jed was to make him a collage of old engravings, always changing, like some kind of sinister Max Ernst picture in movement, but that would present a copyright issue so I came up with a weird idea. I started with a bunch of parallel lines and used a liquify tool from Clip Studio to make shapes with those lines, and finally adapted these shapes to a human silhouette. It’s probably the weirdest and fastest design I’ve ever done.”

Finally, the artist describes the most complicated character of the crew, Bloodstorm One. “I gave him a lot of thought because I didn’t want to do a vampire superhero, but a true monster, who is scary enough that he’s even scared of himself.” Larraz further elaborated, “He hides his true nature under a perfect human shell, like some kind of Michelangelo’s David which is rotten inside, twisted, homicidal. The worst monster of all is the one who wants to look as the perfect human. The armor is an homage to Vlad Tepes’ armor from Coppola’s Dracula film, which seemed to me like a proper reference.”

Marvel’s Blood begins on May 1, 2024.

Source: Marvel