X-MEN UNITED #8
“Blood Debts”
Writers: Eve L Ewing & Evan Narcisse
Artist: Tiago Palma
Colour artist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Annalise Bissa

COVER: Wither using his powers on Jubilee and Blade, against a wartorn backdrop. Nothing remotely like this happens in the issue. Interestingly, the solicitation also asked “Who’s behind a spate of recent deaths in Atlanta”, which had more to do with the previous issue’s story.

PAGES 1-7. Blade and Dani attack vampires in a nightclub.

St Paul’s Cathedral Catacombs. This is a baffling caption. The art clearly shows a very large nightclub. There aren’t any such establishments under St Paul’s. It does have a crypt, but there’s no way on earth you’d be holding raves there, not least because it contains a graveyard and a war memorial. Simply mystifying.

The vampires. Dani’s powers work on the sole surviving vampire; their greatest fear seems to be crusaders, so presumably they’ve been around for a while. Something must have tipped off Blade that he could find vampires here, but nothing is actually mentioned.

Heolfor House. “Heolfor” was an Old English word meaning blood or gore (with somewhat poetic connotations).

PAGES 8-9. The X-Men make plans at Emma’s apartment.

Emma doesn’t actually appear in this issue – in fact, the only character appearing who could be described as a regular is Prodigy.

“Glad we all made it back in one piece.” I’m not sure why Prodigy says this. Back from what? Only Blade and Dani were at the nightclub (as the rest of the dialogue confirms).

“You’ve been gone for a minute…” Dani is probably meant to be referring to the period when Blade was possessed by Varnae during (and prior to) Blood Hunt, since nothing else is springing to mind.

Chamber. This is his first significant appearance in print since the abortive Weapon X-Men series last year. However, we’d already established that he moved back to London after the fall of Krakoa, in Astonishing X-Men Infinity Comic #4.

PAGES 10-12. Blade and the X-Men arrive at Heolfor House.

Dani is apparently using her powers to disguise the team members who are approaching the house directly, which isn’t the normal use of her ability, but sure, why not.

Prodigy’s ability to copy knowledge and skills extends to allowing him to imitate Chamber’s accent. Again, not a normal use of his power, but I guess there’s no reason why “the ability to do a convincing London accent” shouldn’t qualify as a skill, even if Chamber himself wouldn’t perceive it as such.

“High-tech guards, low-tech locks.” Another very odd line. This flatly contradicts Chamber’s dialogue on the previous page, where he said that if one of the guards was taken by surprise then their biometric vests would raise the alarm and the “whole system locks down”. What system? It’s a Yale lock! But on the next page, Wither is back to complaining that Blade will “send the whole system into lockdown” if he gets caught, and on the page after that, there’s an electronic keycard.

Apparently Wolverine and Jubilee are both entirely fine with Blade departing from the plan because his daughter is at stake, even though everyone else is relying on him to go with the plan (which he presumably signed up to in advance). Wither expressly draws attention to this but everyone ignores him and there don’t seem to be any consequences.

PAGES 13-19. The X-Men and Blade rescue Bloodline.

The Red Scion is obviously Justina Laguardia, given the rest of the plot.

“Prodigy and Chamber will be here any minute with the blueprints of the house.” What? How? If they don’t already have blueprints of the house, what possible reason do they have to think that Prodigy and Chamber were going to find some blueprints in the presumably-random room that they broke into? Why do they think that there are any blueprints of the house on site? Why would there be? And what do they even want the blueprints for anyway? It’s not going to have a room clearly labelled HOSTAGE HERE, is it? Besides, Blade already seem to know where he’s going. And, come to think of it, how? Is the entire plot here “Blade endangers the mission but it’s fine because he guesses right”?

Lucas Cross. His aim here is basically to get rich by carrying out a ritual which requires three generations of his family – hence, kidnapping Brielle to lure in Blade. This doesn’t have much to do with his established motivations in the Guggenheim/Chaykin Blade series, where he was more of an “ends justify the means” guy. However, the final page establishes that he’s trying to raise funds for whatever deal he had with Justina, and that’s more in character for him. He was supposed to wind up with an army of mutant vampires, and while we never find out what exactly he was planning to do with it, presumably it fits into his wider plans somewhere.

The story also seems to imply that this is a historical home of the family, though to be fair it doesn’t say this outright. If that is what they’re trying to imply, then it calls for some explanation, because Cross is Latverian. But it could be a historical vampire home that Cross has appropriated.

Blade seizes Cross’s home for himself, and then everyone just lets Cross go. Blade does offer a justification for this – he’ll lead them back to whoever the Red Scion was – but only after Cross has left, and Blade doesn’t seem to have discussed it with the X-Men in advance.

PAGE 20. Justina kills Cross.

Or does something to him? It’s not clear, really. At any rate, she’s stolen all his remaining money and dumped him now that he’s no longer of use.