Over the last few weeks, we've brought you various details about Blood Hunt, the upcoming Marvel Comics crossover event launching this May. Centred around a main event series by writer Jed MacKay and artist Pepe Larraz, the story will see a cursed eternal night wash over Earth, allowing vampires, who have lurked in the shadows since the earliest days of the Marvel Universe, emerge to satisfy their blood lust like never before.
Recent tie-in announcements have revealed which heroes will play pivotal roles in this latest Marvel epic, but the key villains of Blood Hunt have remained shrouded in darkness...until now! Today, we can introduce you to the Bloodcoven.
The Bloodcoven are a mysterious and deadly vampire faction consisting of Megrim, Cruel, Unusual, the Damascene, Smoke Eater, and their leader, Bloodstorm One, a clone of Dracula created by HYDRA.
The group's motives, powers and abilities "will strike unfathomable fear into the hearts of your favourite heroes," according to a Marvel Comics press release, and it's said, "their bloodlust is only matched by their extreme brutality and an undying commitment to a dark master."
MacKay explains, "I knew going in that vampires weren't bad enough. If the children of the night were going up against the Avengers, let alone the other heroes of the world, bigger guns were required. Hence the Bloodcoven - supervampires, fed on the blood of superhumans that follow different vampiric philosophies, subsisting not only on blood but pain, or magic, or thoughts, or even ghosts."
"I threw together a list of names and some thoughts about powers," he adds, "but it was Pepe who really brought these characters to (un)life, creating an extremely gnarly set of predators."
Larraz has shed new light on his design inspiration for each member of this shadowy faction, and you can read his breakdowns below.
Cruel - "This one was pretty straightforward, a character wrapped in razor wire by his own will is terrifying enough, so that is what I did. I added the cloud of wires at his feet and neck, always moving like some kind of metal gorgon."
Smoke Eater - "The idea is that he inhales ghosts to acquire their strength in combat, so I made a physical representation of that. He becomes the unification of multiple beings, therefore the multiple limbs, which makes his silhouette pretty recognizable in battle scenes, and makes him one of the heavy hitters of the team. The idea is that he shows all the eyes of the ghosts on his forehead. I have a thing with eyes--on my designs, I either put none or too many!"
Damascene - "My initial idea was to make them bi-dimensional, like a paper sheet that will cut you when you try to grab it, but it was very difficult to convey that idea in comics, without movement. So I did his body absolutely geometrical to remark the sharpness of the body. Again, I decided to put no face. Expressionless beings are more scary, in my opinion."
Megrim - "Probably the most vampire-looking of the litter. I hid her face on red cloth but my idea is that the cloth was always drenched in blood. The skirt's folds make shapes like faces screaming of pain. Everything is super intense with her. She must be unbearable."
Unusual - "The initial idea by Jed was to make him a collage of old engravings, always changing, like some kind of sinister Max Ernst picture in movement, but that would present a copyright issue so I came up with a weird idea. I started with a bunch of parallel lines and used a liquify tool from Clip Studio to make shapes with those lines, and finally adapted these shapes to a human silhouette. It’s probably the weirdest and fastest design I've even done."
Bloodstorm One - "I gave him a lot of thought because I didn't want to do a vampire super hero, but a true monster, who is scary enough that he’s even scared of himself. He hides his true nature under a perfect human shell, like some kind of Michelangelo's David which is rotten inside, twisted, homicidal. The worst monster of all is the one who wants to look as the perfect human. The armor is an homage to Vlad Tepes' armor from Coppola's Dracula film, which seemed to me like a proper reference."
BLOOD HUNT #1 (OF 5)
Written by JED MACKAY
Art and Cover by PEPE LARRAZ
Colors by MARTE GRACIA
On Sale 5/1