Marvel Team-Up (Vol. 2) #7
Sun-Walkers!
At dawn, a vampire secretly enters the science building at Empire State University, as Blade watches him from outside. Inside, Peter Parker has been up all night studying when he is woken up by Jose Lopez, the campus janitor that Peter has befriended over the years. Jose tells Peter not to work himself to hard and reminds him to get his rest. Peter thanks Jose for the advice and packs up his things to go. Moments later, Joes enters one of the labs and catches a vampire named Henry Sage injecting himself with a formula. Not wanting to be found, the vampire the janitor. Hearing Jose's screams, Peter rushes back to the lab, changing into Spider-Man along the way. Unfortunately, the wall-crawler arrives too late to save Jose from being exsanguinated by the vampire. Sage is far too strong for Spider-Man and easily fights past the wall-crawler and leaps out of the window. However, Spider-Man catches up to him and quickly subdues Henry with webbing and leaves him for the police.[1] watching from a nearby tree, Blade waits for the wall-crawler to leave so he can do his job.
Henry Sage is taken to Ryker's Island where he is imprisoned in a cell. However, before he can break out, a guard on the inside helps Blade get in. The vampire hunter subdues the vampire and they sneak him out of the prison. Later, Blade takes Sage out to the beech to expose him to the sun. As Blade had feared, the formula that Sage injected himself with had made him almost invulnerable to sunlight. However, Blade takes joy in the fact that the sun still causes his prisoner a great deal of discomfort.
Meanwhile, Peter Parker and his wife Mary Jane are attending the funeral of Jose Lopez.[2] Seeing Jose's widow and children, Peter blames himself for not being able to stop his murder, but Mary Jane insists that he did the best he could. Later that night, when the Parkers watch the news they catch a story about how Henry Sage was broken out of his jail cell. Seeing a photo of the assailant, Peter recognizes him as Blade the Vampire Hunter, whom he heard about from Doctor Strange. Knowing that Blade is based in New Orleans, Spider-Man hitches a ride on the roof of a delivery truck with Louisianna plates to get there. Meanwhile, Blade is driving back to his home with Henry Sage in the back of his van. Blade tells Sage that he would kill him if he and his allies didn't need to find out how the so-called "sun-walker" formula works. Telling the vampire that he has had an extreme hatred of Vampire ever since they killed his mother while giving birth to him, cursing him to a life of being half-human/half-vampire himself.[3] Sage then surprises Blade by telling the hunter that he can relate, saying he hates vampires as they are responsible for the death of his whole family.
By this time, Spider-Man has arrived in New Orleans and begins searching for Blade and Sage hoping his spider-sense can detect them when he gets close. While in a nearby warehouse, a team of scientists who are examining Sage in order to learn the secrets of the Sun-Walker Formula. Left alone with his prisoner, Blade once more threatens to end the vampire's life. Henry Sage then takes this opportunity to tell Blade about the death of his family. He claims his family was murdered in 1794 by Dracula when they lived in Austria. Henry arrived too late to stop Dracula from killing his family and was quickly fed upon by the Lord of Vampires as well. Unlike his family, he did not die then but was cursed to become a vampire himself. Blade finds it hard to believe that this vampire could have any feelings about his past life. That's when Spider-Man comes crashing in through the window intending to take Sage back to New York to face justice. Unwilling to let his prisoner go, Blade and the wall-crawler come to blows. It is while they are distracted with each other, Sage manages to break free from his bonds and tries to flee.
The two agree to put their differences aside and stop Henry Sage. The pair follow the vampire to a nearby graveyard where he keeps the two heroes on the defensive. Using his ability to turn into mist, Sage manages to overpower Spider-Man and threatens to turn him into a vampire. That's when Blade impales the undead creature through the heart with one of his swords, causing the vampire to crumble to dust. That's when they notice that the vampire died atop the graves of his long-dead family.[4] In the aftermath of the battle, Blade realizes that a side-effect of the Day-Walker formula was that it also restore a vampire's humanity and considers letting the vampires have access to it after all since it could be a cure of sorts.
Recurring Characters
Spider-Man, Blade the Vampire Hunter, Mary Jane Watson, Dracula (flashback)
Continuity Notes
Spider-Man states that he wants to make sure that Sage gets executed for his crimes. This should be considered a topical reference per the Sliding Timescale of Earth-616 as the death penalty was abolished in the State of New York in 2007.
Peter and Mary Jane are referred to as husband and wife here. However, years later, their marriage is erased from existence by Mephisto in Amazing Spider-Man #545. As such they should be considered a common-law couple here.
Blade's origins were first told in Marvel Preview #3.
Although Sage states that his family died in Austria, the fact that their bodies are buried in New Orleans is not impossible as it was not uncommon for people to move the bodies of their loved ones to another location so they could "still be close" particularly in the era that Sage grew up in.
