When New Line Cinema released Blade in the summer of '98, few of the viewers that made the action-horror film a surprise hit had any idea (unless they paid close attention to the credits) that the character originated in the pages of Marvel Comics. Mostly, that was due to the character's obscurity. But also it was because at that time, in the wake of misfires like The Punisher (1989) and Captain America (1990), the fact that a film was a Marvel Comics adaptation was not seen as a selling point.
