The Gang War concluded only a few weeks ago, but a new bloody menace is emerging and, this time, it’s not confined to New York, it’s all over the world. The big summer event of Marvel Comics is here.
Coming from writer Jed MacKay and artist Pepe Larraz, as the official synopsis tells it, Marvel’s Blood Hunt starts as “the skies have gone dark, the sun hiding its face from the carnage to come. The children of the night, the vampires, have risen from the dark and hidden places of the world as one to drown the Marvel Universe in blood. Earth’s final night has fallen—can even the heroes of this doomed world stem the tide of blood that is to come? A dawn might assuredly come, but not before the universe is drenched in crimson!”
Avengers, Blade, Bloodline, Spider-Man, Hunter’s Moon, Tigra, Doctor Strange and Clea, The X-Men, and more are fighting in a war of a new kind against the creatures of the night.
What to read before the Blood Hunt crossover event?
If you want a quick recap of the story of Vampyrsk, the Vampire Kingdom, you can go read this presentation compiled by Sam Stone at Marvel.
Since Jason Aaron put Dracula at the center of an Avengers storyline a few years ago, the place of the vampires evolved in the Marvel Universe. Here is a guide that includes Jed MacKay’s Vampire Nation storyline in Moon Knight.
- Avengers by Jason Aaron Vol. 3: War Of The Vampires
Collects Avengers (2018) #13-17. - Unforgiven
Collects Spider-Man: Unforgiven, X-Men: Unforgiven, Captain America: Unforgiven, and Blade: Vampire Nation #1. - Moon Knight vol. 3: Halfway To Sanity
Collects Moon Knight (2021) #13-18 and Moon Knight Annual (2022) #1. (The event ends up being important for Moon Knight, you may want to be up-to-date) - Bloodline: Daughter of Blade
Collects Bloodline: Daughter Of Blade #1-5, And Material From Free Comic Book Day 2022: Avengers/X-Men and Crypt Of Shadows (2022) #1. - Blade vol. 1: Mother of Evil
Collects Blade (2023) #1-5. - Blade (2023) #6-10. (not collected yet)
- Miles Morales: Spider-Man (2022) #11. (not collected yet)
Marvel Blood Hunt Reading Order
Blood Hunt Reading Order: Collected Editions
As always, this part will be completed as Marvel publishes the books (around November and December 2024). Come back later for more information.
- Blood Hunt
Collects Blood Hunt (2024) #1-5. - X-Men: Blood Hunt
Collects X-Men: Blood Hunt – Jubilee (2024) #1, X-Men: Blood Hunt – Magik (2024) #1, X-Men: Blood Hunt – Psylocke (2024) #1, X-Men: Blood Hunt – Laura Kinney the Wolverine (2024) #1, Wolverine: Blood Hunt (2024) #1-4. - Blood Hunt: Marvel Universe
Collects Black Panther: Blood Hunt (2024) #1-3, Strange Academy: Blood Hunt (2024) #1-3, Hulk: Blood Hunt (2024) #1. - Amazing Spider-Man: Blood Hunt
Collects Amazing Spider-Man: Blood Hunt (2024) #1-3, Amazing Spider-Man (2022) #49, Miles Morales Spider-Man (2023) #21-22. - Blood Hunters
Collects Blood Hunters (2024) #1-4. - more to come…
Blood Hunt Reading Order: Issue by Issue
The following reading order is about the issues only. It will be updated as the event progresses.
With all the tie-ins, the essential series to follow are Blood Hunt for the main event and Dracula: Blood Hunt to follow what happens to Bloodline, daughter of Blade. Doctor Strange #15 and Dracula: Blood Hunt #1 are useful for understanding what happened between Blood Hunt #1 and #2 but after that, no individual issue adds something significant to the main story. Most of the tie-ins are set in New York, but some miniseries are on the West Coast or in Europe.
Every issue of the Blood Hunt miniseries comes in two versions, the regular family-friendly one and the “Red Band Edition” which contains more pages with explicit material.
- Free Comic Book Day 2024: Blood Hunt/X-Men (Prelude)
- Vengeance of the Moon Knight #5
- Blood Hunt #1
- Doctor Strange #15
- The Avengers #14
- Dracula: Blood Hunt #1
- Strange Academy: Blood Hunt #1
- Fantastic Four #21
- X-Men: Blood Hunt – Psylocke #1
- The Amazing Spider-Man #49
- The Amazing Spider-Man: Blood Hunt #1
- Blood Hunters #1
- Venom #33-34
- Union Jack the Ripper: Blood Hunt #1-2-3 (story set in the UK, away from the main events)
- Blood Hunt #2
- Black Panther: Blood Hunt #1-2
- Midnight Sons: Blood Hunt #1
- The Amazing Spider-Man: Blood Hunt #2
- Blood Hunters #2
- Wolverine: Blood Hunt #1 (story set in California, away from the main events)
- Hulk: Blood Hunt #1 (story set in Arizona, away from the main events)
- X-Men: Blood Hunt – Jubilee #1
- Strange Academy: Blood Hunt #2
- The Avengers #15
- Blood Hunt #3
- Dracula: Blood Hunt #2
- Miles Morales: Spider-Man #21
- Doctor Strange #16
- Wolverine: Blood Hunt #2
- Black Panther: Blood Hunt #3
- Blood Hunt #4
- Midnight Sons: Blood Hunt #2
- Miles Morales: Spider-Man #22
- X-Men: Blood Hunt – Magik #1
- X-Men: Blood Hunt – Laura Kinney: The Wolverine #1
- Vengeance of the Moon Knight #6
- Doctor Strange #17
- Werewolf By Night: Blood Hunt #1 (highly optional)
- Wolverine: Blood Hunt #3-4
- Blood Hunters #3
- The Avengers #16
- The Amazing Spider-Man: Blood Hunt #3
- Blood Hunters #4
- Dracula: Blood Hunt #3
- Strange Academy: Blood Hunt #3
- Vengeance of the Moon Knight #7
- Blood Hunt #5
- Midnight Sons: Blood Hunt #3
- Fantastic Four #22
After The Blood Hunt ended
Now that the Blood Hunt has ended, Marvel is already teasing the next event, directly connected to the conclusion of this one: “One World Under Doom!” It’s coming in the next few months.
A new series is also coming: Blood Hunters. Elsa Bloodstone, Dagger, White Widow (Yelena Belova), and Hallows’s Eve are forming a new team to deal with vampires, and their road crosses the path of Miles Morales who also deals with his own vampiric problems in his ongoing series.