Issue(s): Tomb of Dracula #10, Vampire Tales #2 (Satana story only)
Published Date: "His name is... Blade!" / "Satana the Devil's daughter!"
Title: Jul 73 / Oct 73
Credits:
Marv Wolfman / Roy Thomas - Writer
Gene Colan / John Romita Sr. - Penciler
Jack Abel / John Romita Sr. - Inker

Review/plot:
This issue has the first appearance of Blade. He's definitely modeled after blaxploitation characters, Shaft specifically, and while he's portrayed as an effective fighter, he's shown to rely entirely on wooden weapons, rejecting Harker's advanced weaponry and planning (he screws up the British team's ability to follow a group of vampire minions to Dracula by killing all of them). Still, he adds a new dimension to the series; he's certainly the first character that isn't incredibly stuffy.

Blade stops Dracula from causing too much mayhem on a cruise boat...

...and Clifton Graves is seemingly killed when the ship explodes.

Dracula and Harker were already aware of Blade prior to this appearance, allowing for the development of a backstory.

Check out Dracula the pick-up artist.

Also in this reprint in the first appearance of Satana, the Devil's Daughter. It's a "the hunted turns out to be the hunter" type of story, with Satana sucking the soul out of a would-be rapist.

Just a preview of the character, really.

Quality Rating: C

Historical Significance Rating: 7 - first Blade, first Satana

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References:

• There's a fairly gratuitous reference to Dracula Lives #2, saying that only one other man has mocked Dracula as much as Blade has.

Cross-over: N/A

Continuity Implant? N

Reprinted In: Marvel Milestones: Blade, Man-Thing, Satana

Tomb of Dracula was originally supposed to be a b&w magazine drawn by Bill Everett in 1971, but the problems with Savage Tales #1 stopped that.

Satana only wore this costume for this story and a house ad or two. When it was first reprinted in the Marvel Premiere-Satana issue, some dialogue was inexplicably changed and it reproduced a lot darker.

The Dracula Lives footnote may mean the first Solomon Kane Vs. Dracula story, which Marvel can't reprint due to losing the Robert E. Howard license.