BLADE

When Eric Brooks debuted in The Tomb of Dracula #10 (1973), by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan, he was not a daywalker at all — he was an ordinary, if extraordinary, human. The vampire Deacon Frost had fed on his mother as she gave birth to him in a London brothel, and enzymes passed to the newborn left Blade immune to vampire bites and able to sense the supernatural. No super-strength, no healing factor — just skill, teakwood knives, and a grudge.

The powered Blade arrived twenty-six years later, in Peter Parker: Spider-Man #8 (1999) — a year after the hit film had reimagined him as a born dhampir. Teamed with Spider-Man against Morbius, the Living Vampire, Blade was bitten, and his birth enzymes reacted with Morbius's scientifically created vampirism instead of turning him. He came away with a vampire's strength, speed, senses and healing — and none of the weaknesses, sunlight included. His prey named the result: the Daywalker.

Even that upgrade did not survive editorial review. In Blade Vol. 3 (2006), Marvel quietly retired the Morbius explanation, and by issue #5 Blade himself states that his powers were in him from birth — Deacon Frost's bite, not Morbius's, made him what he is. The bite remains in the old issues: a fossil of the moment Hollywood rewrote a comic book.