‘Blood Hunt’ #1 Introduces The Bloodcoven

Marvel’s Blood Hunt has nearly started, and the Avengers will be facing a terrifying new foe as the event begins.

Writer Jed MacKay has gained a reputation with all of his work for introducing unique and frightening antagonists. In Avengers alone, we’ve met the Ashen Combine and the Twilight Court. Teaming with artist Pepe Larraz, MacKay will introduce the latest in his line of weird foes in Blood Hunt #1.

Consisting of six completely unique super-vampires, the Bloodcoven serve a still-mysterious master at the core of the event.

Check out MacKay and Larraz’s thoughts about the characters and their designs below, and watch for Blood Hunt #1 when it hits stands on May 1.

“I knew going in that vampires weren’t bad enough. If the children of the night were going up against the Avengers, let alone the other heroes of the world, bigger guns were required,” MacKay explained. “Hence the Bloodcoven — supervampires, fed on the blood of superhumans that follow different vampiric philosophies, subsisting not only on blood but pain, or magic, or thoughts, or even ghosts! I threw together a list of names and some thoughts about powers, but it was Pepe who really brought these characters to (un)life, creating an extremely gnarly set of predators!”

 Larraz shed light on his design inspiration for each member of this shadowy faction:

 Cruel

“This one was pretty straightforward, a character wrapped in razor wire by his own will is terrifying enough, so that is what I did. I added the cloud of wires at his feet and neck, always moving like some kind of metal gorgon.”

 Smoke Eater

“The idea is that he inhales ghosts to acquire their strength in combat, so I made a physical representation of that. He becomes the unification of multiple beings, therefore the multiple limbs, which makes his silhouette pretty recognizable in battle scenes, and makes him one of the heavy hitters of the team. The idea is that he shows all the eyes of the ghosts on his forehead. I have a thing with eyes–on my designs, I either put none or too many!”

 Damascene

“My initial idea was to make them bi-dimensional, like a paper sheet that will cut you when you try to grab it, but it was very difficult to convey that idea in comics, without movement. So I did his body absolutely geometrical to remark the sharpness of the body. Again, I decided to put no face. Expressionless beings are more scary, in my opinion.”

 Megrim

“Probably the most vampire-looking of the litter. I hid her face on red cloth but my idea is that the cloth was always drenched in blood. The skirt’s folds make shapes like faces screaming of pain. Everything is super intense with her. She must be unbearable.”

 Unusual

“The initial idea by Jed was to make him a collage of old engravings, always changing, like some kind of sinister Max Ernst picture in movement, but that would present a copyright issue so I came up with a weird idea. I started with a bunch of parallel lines and used a liquify tool from Clip Studio to make shapes with those lines, and finally adapted these shapes to a human silhouette. It’s probably the weirdest and fastest design I’ve even done.”

Bloodstorm One

“I gave him a lot of thought because I didn’t want to do a vampire super hero, but a true monster, who is scary enough that he’s even scared of himself. He hides his true nature under a perfect human shell, like some kind of Michelangelo’s David which is rotten inside, twisted, homicidal. The worst monster of all is the one who wants to look as the perfect human. The armor is an homage to Vlad Tepes’ armor from Coppola’s Dracula film, which seemed to me like a proper reference.”