When "Blade" hit theaters on this day in 1998, it was far more than a stylish vampire action movie. Despite some of its not-quite-ready-for-prime-time CGI, it was one of the films that helped save the superhero genre and provided a proof-of-concept that Marvel characters could succeed on the big screen. Years before X-Men, Spider-Man, or the Marvel Cinematic Universe existed, Blade combined kinetic martial-arts action, gothic horror, cutting-edge visual style, and a charismatic lead performance into something audiences had never quite seen before. Snipes' portrayal of the half-human, half-vampire "Daywalker" was intense, iconic, and effortlessly cool, helping establish one of the first successful Black superhero leads in modern cinema.

And the film's box-office success showed that comic-book adaptations could work even when based on relatively obscure characters, paving the way for Marvel's later dominance of popular culture.

First Draft: Update: WVU’s Unbearable Whiteness of Being Center.

Governing: Schoolhouse Politics and the U.S. Senate.

driftglass: Can't Stop Won't Stop.

Attention space nerds! Scientists just found the fastest known star in the Milky Way. It zooms around our black hole at 15,500 miles per second.

Round Up by driftglass of the Professional Left Podcast and Science Fiction University

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