Warning: contains spoilers for Bloodline: Daughter of Blade #4!Brielle Brooks, the daughter of Blade, is inching ever closer to her heroic destiny as she gets a new costume made for a superhero. The past few issues, after living a normal life with her mother for years, teenage Brielle is finally getting to know her father (and her bloodlust) for the first time. Blade is reluctantly training his daughter to fend for herself, offering her a major acknowledgment of her progress.
Bloodline: Daughter of Blade #4 by Danny Lore and Karen S. Darboe begins with the end of that first night of training. Blade admits they have been training hard and as a reward for her hard work, he gifts her with her very own leather jacket. The jacket is a version of Blade’s own and modified for vampire slaying, including stake pockets and plasma capsules with a modified version of the syringes that Blade carries to control his bloodlust. Blade’s jacket is an iconic part of his look in Marvel Comics, and now Brielle has her own.
Blade Gifts His Daughter Her Own Jacket, Fit For a Hero
Brielle’s potential as a hero certainly looks bright, especially judging by the previous issue’s training session. During that session, despite having the edge of experience over his daughter, Blade admitted that he needed to “adapt” to his daughter’s style, acknowledging that she’s already strong enough to keep up with a member of the Avengers. Even earlier in the issue, Blade was struggling in a fight with his daughter when she broke off in an uncontrollable bloodlust, letting the vampire half of her take over.
Brielle’s Hero Journey Continues
Blade’s jacket is an iconic part of the character, popularized as the hero’s defining look by the 1998 Blade movie starring Wesley Snipes (though in canon, he actually got it from Wolverine in their violent first meeting.) By passing the jacket to Brielle, Blade is making her connection to his legacy inarguable, and also shaping her future vampire-slaying persona. Blade’s own personal history is convoluted – he didn’t even have his half-vampire powers until late in his existence – but Brielle’s is just starting, allowing Marvel to set out a far clearer path from the curse of vampirism to being a nocturnal hero.
The series in general is paving the way for Brielle to become one of Marvel’s next generation of heroes, especially in awarding her a key piece of ‘Blade’ iconography. While Brielle still needs to carve out her own identity, every legacy hero is a combination of past legacy and future potential, with Blade‘s gift to his daughter confirming that she’s officially the next step in the quest to rid the world of bloodsuckers.
Bloodline: Daughter of Blade #4 is available now from Marvel Comics.
