Blade is the first. No, he's not the first African-American superhero to grace the pages of a comic book but Marvel's very first artistic and financial success in Hollywood was Blade. Blade pre-dates the first X-Men movie by two years and the original Spider-Man by four. Blade, which earned more than triple its cost at the box-office, was a hit a full decade before Iron Man was released. 1986's Howard the Duck, 1989's The Punisher and 1990's Captain America were all horrible flops. 1994's The Fantastic Four was so bad it was never even released. While DC had already given the world successful big-screen versions of Superman and Batman, Blade proved that film adaptations of Marvel comics could be viable enterprises. The billion-dollar exploits of Captain America, the Avengers and the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe would never have been possible if not for a 1998 movie about an African-American vampire half-breed who hates 50% of his heritage (vampires, not African-Americans). Blade was so popular that it spawned a trilogy, the third installment of which gave then-future-Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds his entree into the Marvel world.
"The book is better than the movie." Not in this case. Blade is a damn good movie based on a subpar comic. Not only is it one of the best comic book movies ever to hit cineplexes, but it's also one of the best vampire movies ever produced. It also happens to be the first Marvel movie to feature a Stan Lee cameo, though it was wisely deleted in favor of the more serious final product.
Originally, LL Cool J was in talks to star in Blade as a parody. Luckily, those ideas were nixed too. Blade just happens to have been written by David S. Goyer, who also co-wrote the screenplays for the Dark Knight trilogy.
On top of all of that, it also bears the distinction of being the movie that introduced the world to the drop-(un)dead gorgeous (bad pun intended) Sanaa Lathan. After the movie's release, none of the dudes that I knew that had seen it, would shut up about "Blade's Mom".
Blade tells the story of a guy imbued with superhuman abilities, clad in black leather and a match black trenchcoat, who wages war on (of which most of the world is unaware), and is pursued by, a virtual army of black-clad foes who similarly possess superhuman abilities. Said guy has a penchant for wearing dark sunglasses, is highly proficient in martial arts, routinely defies the laws of physics and is largely known by a one-name alias. He's mentored by an older man of a different race, who, while highly-skilled and knowledgeable, is not as powerful as our hero. He is also aided by a woman, possessing of highly-technical expertise, whose life he saves. At one point, the two are pursued through a subway tunnel. His aforementioned enemies are bent on the global subjugation of humankind and harvest them for their biological resources. It's also made clear that the fate of mankind hinges, in part, on the fulfillment of a prophecy -- with the hero being called "the chosen one". When cluing a character in to her new reality, Blade himself says, "The world you know is just sugar-coating. There's another world -- the real world-- beneath it." Blade was released to theaters on August 21, 1998. The Matrix was released nearly seven months later. Just saying.
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