BLADE (2006) #6

MARVEL COMICS
WRITER: Marc Guggenheim
ARTIST: Howard Chaykin
COLORIST: Edgar Delgado
COVER: Marko Djurdjevic
32 pp., Color, $2.99

I'm exhausted from praising this book.  What else can I say?  Marc Guggenheim has done what most comic book fans thought impossible just four years ago - write a really good comic book with Marvel's vampire-hunting chocolate thunder, Blade, in a starring (not guest-starring) role.

Entitled "Two Chambers," Blade #06 features the long anticipated first encounter between Blade and his apparent father, Lucas Cross.  Guggenheim divides each issue of Blade into a story set in the present and one set in Blade or his father's distant past.  This time getting another glimpse at the dark history of Cross gives us a chance to meet Blade's mother, Tara.  Guggenheim ultimately builds this issue around the familiar notion of "like father, like son," and shows just how far both Blade and Cross will go to survive and to win.

Is it luck that Howard Chaykin has turned out to be so in tune with Guggenheim?  Joined by colorist Edgar Delgado, Chaykin usually hits the right notes when visualizing both the present and back stories.  Chaykin is dead on in conveying the appropriate emotions and moods, and his static images of action perfectly capture the violence of Blade's world.

8/10