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In case you don’t know who Hannibal King is, here’s his story:

Decades ago Hannibal King was a detective in Boston, Massachusetts just scraping by in life hoping for that one big case he could solve that would make his reputation. When King took an industrial espionage case he had hoped it would be his big break.

While casing a factory the vampire Deacon Frost invaded the facility and killed everyone within, including Hannibal King. Waking up three days later in a morgue King was horrified to discover he had been transformed into a vampire by Frost’s bite.

Although he needed blood to survive the strong willed King refused to give into his vampiric urges to attack the living and instead bought or stole his sustenance from blood banks, fed off of animals or fresh corpses. King turned to alcohol as well to help slake his thirst and to kill the pain he felt from not feeding on blood on a regular basis. King also preferred not to use his vampiric powers unless a situation forced him to since he believed using them was giving in to the curse he was now burdened with.

Hannibal King continued to operate as a private detective even though his vampiric limitations only made it possible for him to do so at night and he began to take cases that dealt with the supernatural as well as trying to find Deacon Frost in order to gain revenge on the vampire for turning him.

It was through these cases and King’s obsession with tracking down Frost that Hannibal King eventually met the vampire lord Dracula. Despite Dracula being an elder vampire and lord of all vampires King refused to acknowledge as his lord and master, making him one of the few vampires on earth strong willed enough to defy the vampire lord and gained Dracula’s enmity.

During his travels King met up with Blade the vampire hunter who was also tracking Deacon Frost for killing Blade’s mother. Although Blade instinctually hated King for being a vampire they put aside their differences and Blade actually started to respect King for his determination to fight curse and kill Deacon Frost or any other vampire that got in their way.

The pursuit of Deacon Frost led the two unlikely partners to discover that Frost somehow had the mystic ability to create vampiric doppelgangers (twins) of any of his victims, including Blade and King. When the two were closing in on Frost he created and dispatched an evil Blade doppelganger to attack them.

The Vampire Blade mystically merged with the real Blade and dominated their shared form and attacked King who fled. With the Blade doppelganger in pursuit King sought shelter and ironically crashed a ball being held by Dracula where Frost was in attendance. The doppelganger fought with King until Dracula attacked Blade who enraged Dracula by not accepting him as his lord and master. While the two fought King spotted Frost and pursued him to his hideout as a bat.

Hannibal returned to the party to retrieve Blade as Quincy Harker’s band of vampire hunters arrived but all were too late to help Blade who had been staked through the heart by Dracula. A funeral was held at night for their fallen comrade with Hannibal King in attendance. Once the mourners left King contacted Daimon Hellstrom, the Son of Satan, to help him separate the vampire doppelganger from Blade’s body and destroy it. Digging up Blade, King removed the stake and Hellstrom using his demonic powers separated the two Blades allowing King to stake the vampire doppelganger’s heart and then decapitate it. Hellstrom stuffed the severed head with garlic and buried it separately from the body ending its threat of returning.

King welcomed the revived Blade back to reality and he was grateful to both King and Daimon for rescuing him. Informing Blade that he had found Deacon Frost’s lair in the catacombs beneath a local cemetery the two bid farewell to Hellstrom and invaded Frost’s hideout. Once inside Blade and King were confronted by Frost who had created an army of Blade and King doppelgangers to fight his pursuers.

Despite the odds against them the duo killed their doppelgangers by fighting each other’s twins removing their threat of absorbing them like before. Weakened by the exertion of creating so many doppelgangers Frost attempted to escape further into the catacombs to his laboratory.

Frost threatened to douse the duo with a beaker full of mutated fungus that would literally rot the flesh from their bones on contact but each countered his threat by throwing teak wood daggers through his heart at the same time. Frost screamed in disbelief and doused himself with the fungus by accident. In monumental pain Frost crashed into his own lab equipment causing a chain reaction of explosions to rock the catacombs. Barely escaping with their lives, King and Blade dove out of the cavern as it was consumed in flames and collapsed in on itself burying the burnt corpse of Deacon Frost under tons of rubble.

With their mutual revenge gained Hannibal and Blade shook hands gaining each other’s respect and friendship. King left to return back to his hometown and his private eye practice while Blade pursued Dracula with Quincy Harker’s vampire hunters.

Much later King was working a cult murder case which brought him back into contact with Blade and Frank Drake, the two being the only active members left of the original vampire hunter group. The trio teamed with Doctor Stephen Strange when it was revealed the cult was lead by Dracula, who was attempting to find the ancient tome known as the Darkhold. The Darkhold held the Montesi Formula, an incantation that could destroy every vampire on earth and the vampire lord wanted it destroyed.

Despite it meaning his death Hannibal was prepared to sacrifice his life to stop the threat of vampires once and for all. King, Blade and Drake kept the vampire lord at bay while Strange recited the incantations from the book.

Once the spell was enacted, King and Dracula started to succumb to its effects but Strange, using his knowledge as both a doctor and the Earth’s Sorcerer Supreme, saved King. Because King had never drained the blood of a living human being he wasn’t totally susceptible to the spell and by giving him a total blood transfusion Strange was able to save King’s life and return him to being human.

King, with a new lease on life founded the Borderline Detective Agency with Frank Drake and Blade in Boston, Massachusetts which specialized in occult cases as well as regular detective work. Though the trio’s firm was very successful in the beginning it fell apart years later when Frank left the firm to live a normal life with his wife and Blade was arrested and sentenced to an insane asylum after a psychotic break.

When the Montesi Formula started weakening due to demonic forces invading Earth’s dimension King transformed back into a vampire once more much to his horror. Once again cursed with being undead Hannibal started drinking heavily again to deal with his problems. Under the subtle influence of Doctor Strange who wanted the three greatest vampire hunters together again for the coming war he knew was approaching Blade and Frank Drake returned to Boston and rejoined King.

The demon mother Lilith, in an attempt to thwart the prophesy of “The Nine” tricked the trio into attacking Ghost Rider, another member of the mystical number but when they realized they had been duped the trio vowed to remain together and battle Lilith’s forces alongside Ghost Rider (Danny Ketch), John Blaze, Morbius the Living Vampire and the Darkhold Redeemers as the order of the Midnight Sons much to Lilith’s chagrin.

As they battled Lilith and other mystical threats King became more and more self destructive and conflicted over his curse and fell into using his vampiric powers more and more with each case. This put a strain on his relationship with Blade who became less forgiving of King’s vampirism.

When Blade became possessed by a page from the Darkhold he began slaying supernatural beings whether they were friend or foe and gained the power of whoever he killed, including Hannibal King whom he decapitated. The Darkhold Redeemers eventually exorcised Blade’s possession and returned everyone he had killed, including Hannibal back to life. Once again partners King and Blade made peace with one another and forged a stronger friendship.

As the Montesi Formula continued to weaken, Doctor Strange sensed the return of Varnae, the original vampire and vampire lord and tasked King, Blade and Drake with finding and destroying him. At the same time Hydra created a clone of Dracula called Bloodstorm in their latest attempt to make a vampire storm trooper. Bloodstorm was tracked to Varnae’s lair by King, Blade and Drake and a massive battle erupted between them.

When Frank Drake’s Exorcist gun overloaded and exploded it seemingly killed himself and King but instead it merged the two with Bloodstorm into a new host body for Dracula. Much later Blade and his allies managed to separate King and Drake from Dracula and return to normal. Shaken by the ordeal Frank once again quit to try and return to a normal life while Hannibal King went back to his detective work. Understanding that his friends had been through hell and back Blade left them alone to their own devices and pursued Dracula on his own. Months later King took a case from Blade’s old girlfriend Safron and was reunited with Blade. Both were stunned when the case led them and mystic Brother Voodoo to a revived Deacon Frost. Though they eventually defeated Frost the vampire escaped their revenge once more.

While searching for Frost once again Hannibal took a job from Donna Garth to find her father Simon Garth, who had become a zombie many years earlier. King met up with Spider-Man who was also looking for the zombie as well as Morbius whom he had been led to believe was controlling the zombie and making it kidnap people around the city.

King and Spider-Man teamed up and discovered Lilith, the daughter of Dracula, had been using to zombie to gather victims she could turn into vampires to create an army. She had tricked Spider-Man into believing Morbius was the culprit in the hope that he would lead her to the living vampire so she could make him a general in her army.

During the ensuing battle King wrestled with Lilith and gained control of the amulet that controlled the zombie and commanded it to let sunlight into the base which caused her to flee and her vampire army to be destroyed. Later that night, King and Spider-Man returned Simon Garth and the amulet to Donna who buried her father to put him at rest.

Hired by the CIA agent Tatiana Stiles, Hannibal was sent to track down the vampire terrorist Navarro who had stolen biological weapons he intended to blackmail New York with. Captured and imprisoned to weeks, King was starving to death in his cell when Navarro threw a homeless man into it with King and told him he could either drink the man’s blood or Navarro would drain the man himself and turn him into a vampire.

Dying and not wanting to curse the man with being a vampire King fed off a living human for the first time in his long life as a vampire, but as soon as his thirst was slaked he decapitated the homeless man’s body so he couldn’t be resurrected by Navarro.

Stiles and King eventually destroyed Navarro and ended his threat to New York but Tatiana was mortally wounded in the struggle and begged King to make her a vampire to save her life. Once again King went against his moral code and took Tatiana’s life. Once she resurrected as a vampire Tatiana thanked King and used her powers to fight crime but this did little to comfort King who still remains tortured by what he was forced to do.

When Blade struggled against his biological father Lucas Cross, King joined his friend in opposing him and other threats before the duo tracked him to the Order of Tyrana. While Blade confronted his father King hacked into Cross’ computer and printed out a prophecy Cross had been trying to fulfill that would return the souls of all vampires.

Blade refused to participate in the right which made Hannibal furious. Wanting to regain his soul and his humanity again King attacked Blade who was forced to slay his old friend. The ritual was ultimately completed despite this but Cross had misunderstood the prophecy and instead of returning the human souls back to the vampires it instead resurrected every single vampire that had ever been slain which caused Hannibal King and apparently all other vampires on earth to come back to life instantly.

Lucas Cross was crushed by the guilt of what he had brought to pass and seeing his mental state Blade spared his father’s life deciding it would be punishment enough. To make amends for having killed him once again Blade gave Hannibal King a potion that would mystically remove the need for King to consume blood.

Friends once again, King went back to his detective work and the task of tracking down Deacon Frost once more.

Hannibal King and above mentioned characters copyright Marvel Comics

I always liked that Hannibal struggled with his vampiric nature and turned to booze to slake his thirst for blood so I wanted to show him alone, drowning his troubles in a dingy, smoke filled bar in his hometown of Boston. And while I am not a fan of smoking in real life Hannibal is a classic film noir style detective who smokes and drinks so it really helps set the mood for the piece.

Description
In case you don’t know who Hannibal King is, here’s his story:

Decades ago Hannibal King was a detective in Boston, Massachusetts just scraping by in life hoping for that one big case he could solve that would make his reputation. When King took an industrial espionage case he had hoped it would be his big break.

While casing a factory the vampire Deacon Frost invaded the facility and killed everyone within, including Hannibal King. Waking up three days later in a morgue King was horrified to discover he had been transformed into a vampire by Frost’s bite.

Although he needed blood to survive the strong willed King refused to give into his vampiric urges to attack the living and instead bought or stole his sustenance from blood banks, fed off of animals or fresh corpses. King turned to alcohol as well to help slake his thirst and to kill the pain he felt from not feeding on blood on a regular basis. King also preferred not to use his vampiric powers unless a situation forced him to since he believed using them was giving in to the curse he was now burdened with.

Hannibal King continued to operate as a private detective even though his vampiric limitations only made it possible for him to do so at night and he began to take cases that dealt with the supernatural as well as trying to find Deacon Frost in order to gain revenge on the vampire for turning him.

It was through these cases and King’s obsession with tracking down Frost that Hannibal King eventually met the vampire lord Dracula. Despite Dracula being an elder vampire and lord of all vampires King refused to acknowledge as his lord and master, making him one of the few vampires on earth strong willed enough to defy the vampire lord and gained Dracula’s enmity.

During his travels King met up with Blade the vampire hunter who was also tracking Deacon Frost for killing Blade’s mother. Although Blade instinctually hated King for being a vampire they put aside their differences and Blade actually started to respect King for his determination to fight curse and kill Deacon Frost or any other vampire that got in their way.

The pursuit of Deacon Frost led the two unlikely partners to discover that Frost somehow had the mystic ability to create vampiric doppelgangers (twins) of any of his victims, including Blade and King. When the two were closing in on Frost he created and dispatched an evil Blade doppelganger to attack them.

The Vampire Blade mystically merged with the real Blade and dominated their shared form and attacked King who fled. With the Blade doppelganger in pursuit King sought shelter and ironically crashed a ball being held by Dracula where Frost was in attendance. The doppelganger fought with King until Dracula attacked Blade who enraged Dracula by not accepting him as his lord and master. While the two fought King spotted Frost and pursued him to his hideout as a bat.

Hannibal returned to the party to retrieve Blade as Quincy Harker’s band of vampire hunters arrived but all were too late to help Blade who had been staked through the heart by Dracula. A funeral was held at night for their fallen comrade with Hannibal King in attendance. Once the mourners left King contacted Daimon Hellstrom, the Son of Satan, to help him separate the vampire doppelganger from Blade’s body and destroy it. Digging up Blade, King removed the stake and Hellstrom using his demonic powers separated the two Blades allowing King to stake the vampire doppelganger’s heart and then decapitate it. Hellstrom stuffed the severed head with garlic and buried it separately from the body ending its threat of returning.

King welcomed the revived Blade back to reality and he was grateful to both King and Daimon for rescuing him. Informing Blade that he had found Deacon Frost’s lair in the catacombs beneath a local cemetery the two bid farewell to Hellstrom and invaded Frost’s hideout. Once inside Blade and King were confronted by Frost who had created an army of Blade and King doppelgangers to fight his pursuers.

Despite the odds against them the duo killed their doppelgangers by fighting each other’s twins removing their threat of absorbing them like before. Weakened by the exertion of creating so many doppelgangers Frost attempted to escape further into the catacombs to his laboratory.

Frost threatened to douse the duo with a beaker full of mutated fungus that would literally rot the flesh from their bones on contact but each countered his threat by throwing teak wood daggers through his heart at the same time. Frost screamed in disbelief and doused himself with the fungus by accident. In monumental pain Frost crashed into his own lab equipment causing a chain reaction of explosions to rock the catacombs. Barely escaping with their lives, King and Blade dove out of the cavern as it was consumed in flames and collapsed in on itself burying the burnt corpse of Deacon Frost under tons of rubble.

With their mutual revenge gained Hannibal and Blade shook hands gaining each other’s respect and friendship. King left to return back to his hometown and his private eye practice while Blade pursued Dracula with Quincy Harker’s vampire hunters.

Much later King was working a cult murder case which brought him back into contact with Blade and Frank Drake, the two being the only active members left of the original vampire hunter group. The trio teamed with Doctor Stephen Strange when it was revealed the cult was lead by Dracula, who was attempting to find the ancient tome known as the Darkhold. The Darkhold held the Montesi Formula, an incantation that could destroy every vampire on earth and the vampire lord wanted it destroyed.

Despite it meaning his death Hannibal was prepared to sacrifice his life to stop the threat of vampires once and for all. King, Blade and Drake kept the vampire lord at bay while Strange recited the incantations from the book.

Once the spell was enacted, King and Dracula started to succumb to its effects but Strange, using his knowledge as both a doctor and the Earth’s Sorcerer Supreme, saved King. Because King had never drained the blood of a living human being he wasn’t totally susceptible to the spell and by giving him a total blood transfusion Strange was able to save King’s life and return him to being human.

King, with a new lease on life founded the Borderline Detective Agency with Frank Drake and Blade in Boston, Massachusetts which specialized in occult cases as well as regular detective work. Though the trio’s firm was very successful in the beginning it fell apart years later when Frank left the firm to live a normal life with his wife and Blade was arrested and sentenced to an insane asylum after a psychotic break.

When the Montesi Formula started weakening due to demonic forces invading Earth’s dimension King transformed back into a vampire once more much to his horror. Once again cursed with being undead Hannibal started drinking heavily again to deal with his problems. Under the subtle influence of Doctor Strange who wanted the three greatest vampire hunters together again for the coming war he knew was approaching Blade and Frank Drake returned to Boston and rejoined King.

The demon mother Lilith, in an attempt to thwart the prophesy of “The Nine” tricked the trio into attacking Ghost Rider, another member of the mystical number but when they realized they had been duped the trio vowed to remain together and battle Lilith’s forces alongside Ghost Rider (Danny Ketch), John Blaze, Morbius the Living Vampire and the Darkhold Redeemers as the order of the Midnight Sons much to Lilith’s chagrin.

As they battled Lilith and other mystical threats King became more and more self destructive and conflicted over his curse and fell into using his vampiric powers more and more with each case. This put a strain on his relationship with Blade who became less forgiving of King’s vampirism.

When Blade became possessed by a page from the Darkhold he began slaying supernatural beings whether they were friend or foe and gained the power of whoever he killed, including Hannibal King whom he decapitated. The Darkhold Redeemers eventually exorcised Blade’s possession and returned everyone he had killed, including Hannibal back to life. Once again partners King and Blade made peace with one another and forged a stronger friendship.

As the Montesi Formula continued to weaken, Doctor Strange sensed the return of Varnae, the original vampire and vampire lord and tasked King, Blade and Drake with finding and destroying him. At the same time Hydra created a clone of Dracula called Bloodstorm in their latest attempt to make a vampire storm trooper. Bloodstorm was tracked to Varnae’s lair by King, Blade and Drake and a massive battle erupted between them.

When Frank Drake’s Exorcist gun overloaded and exploded it seemingly killed himself and King but instead it merged the two with Bloodstorm into a new host body for Dracula. Much later Blade and his allies managed to separate King and Drake from Dracula and return to normal. Shaken by the ordeal Frank once again quit to try and return to a normal life while Hannibal King went back to his detective work. Understanding that his friends had been through hell and back Blade left them alone to their own devices and pursued Dracula on his own. Months later King took a case from Blade’s old girlfriend Safron and was reunited with Blade. Both were stunned when the case led them and mystic Brother Voodoo to a revived Deacon Frost. Though they eventually defeated Frost the vampire escaped their revenge once more.

While searching for Frost once again Hannibal took a job from Donna Garth to find her father Simon Garth, who had become a zombie many years earlier. King met up with Spider-Man who was also looking for the zombie as well as Morbius whom he had been led to believe was controlling the zombie and making it kidnap people around the city.

King and Spider-Man teamed up and discovered Lilith, the daughter of Dracula, had been using to zombie to gather victims she could turn into vampires to create an army. She had tricked Spider-Man into believing Morbius was the culprit in the hope that he would lead her to the living vampire so she could make him a general in her army.

During the ensuing battle King wrestled with Lilith and gained control of the amulet that controlled the zombie and commanded it to let sunlight into the base which caused her to flee and her vampire army to be destroyed. Later that night, King and Spider-Man returned Simon Garth and the amulet to Donna who buried her father to put him at rest.

Hired by the CIA agent Tatiana Stiles, Hannibal was sent to track down the vampire terrorist Navarro who had stolen biological weapons he intended to blackmail New York with. Captured and imprisoned to weeks, King was starving to death in his cell when Navarro threw a homeless man into it with King and told him he could either drink the man’s blood or Navarro would drain the man himself and turn him into a vampire.

Dying and not wanting to curse the man with being a vampire King fed off a living human for the first time in his long life as a vampire, but as soon as his thirst was slaked he decapitated the homeless man’s body so he couldn’t be resurrected by Navarro.

Stiles and King eventually destroyed Navarro and ended his threat to New York but Tatiana was mortally wounded in the struggle and begged King to make her a vampire to save her life. Once again King went against his moral code and took Tatiana’s life. Once she resurrected as a vampire Tatiana thanked King and used her powers to fight crime but this did little to comfort King who still remains tortured by what he was forced to do.

When Blade struggled against his biological father Lucas Cross, King joined his friend in opposing him and other threats before the duo tracked him to the Order of Tyrana. While Blade confronted his father King hacked into Cross’ computer and printed out a prophecy Cross had been trying to fulfill that would return the souls of all vampires.

Blade refused to participate in the right which made Hannibal furious. Wanting to regain his soul and his humanity again King attacked Blade who was forced to slay his old friend. The ritual was ultimately completed despite this but Cross had misunderstood the prophecy and instead of returning the human souls back to the vampires it instead resurrected every single vampire that had ever been slain which caused Hannibal King and apparently all other vampires on earth to come back to life instantly.

Lucas Cross was crushed by the guilt of what he had brought to pass and seeing his mental state Blade spared his father’s life deciding it would be punishment enough. To make amends for having killed him once again Blade gave Hannibal King a potion that would mystically remove the need for King to consume blood.

Friends once again, King went back to his detective work and the task of tracking down Deacon Frost once more.

Hannibal King and above mentioned characters copyright Marvel Comics

I always liked that Hannibal struggled with his vampiric nature and turned to booze to slake his thirst for blood so I wanted to show him alone, drowning his troubles in a dingy, smoke filled bar in his hometown of Boston. And while I am not a fan of smoking in real life Hannibal is a classic film noir style detective who smokes and drinks so it really helps set the mood for the piece.