A beautiful young woman is dead, and Blade is on the hot seat with the police for her murder.  What the police don't know is that beauty was a beast, and Blade drove a wooden stake right through her vampire heart.  Plus, this issue's look back at Blade's past takes us to the first time he confronted a vampire in the street and its disastrous consequences.

In "The Accused" writer Marc Guggenheim continues his quest to make us forget the Blade film franchise and focus on the direction he's taking the series.  He does that with own twist on a plotline from Blade: Trinity, which had the vampire hunter in trouble with the cops for killing a civilian.  Guggenheim gives this tale a sense of peril.  Blade is really in a jam, and even his resourcefulness might not let him get away and return to business as usual.  The flashback tale is also poignant because of the manner in which Guggenheim portrays a lonely boy's struggle with a task way too big for him.

The art team of Howard Chaykin and Edgar Delgado continue to produce good, if not great work.  They've created a dark candy-coated world where death creeps in the borders between the panels.  Their best work is in the facial expressions, which give the story emotional weight and depth.

8/10