Heroes I Miss: Ulysses Bloodstone

I love Curling. It's a sport few really take the time to understand and realize, but an amazing sport to try to describe to folks. The look on their face is totally priceless when you start talking about 20 pound stones with handles, shuffleboard on ice, and lots and lots of sweeping. The blank look on most American's faces when you tell them how great the sport is is totally priceless to me. I'll sit in front of the tube 9 times outta 10, especially when I have nothing else going on, and watch Curling over any other sport except Poker.

To me, Bloodstone is to comics, what Curling is to sports. All this complexity as far as set-up and execution, but perhaps one of the BEST attention getting characters that Marvel has totally shafted. Marvel looked at their property with the same blank stare that Americans give Curling and said "Big stone in his chest? An eternal human? A monster/demon hunter?? WTF??" So, being the great creative folks that they are, they killed him off, fucked with his skeleton, had his daughter pick up his mantle, turned him into a sadistic child beating bastard, and literally pissed on this great character that could have easily been one of their main staple characters right up there with Hulk, Wolverine, and Spider-man. There's that blank look again- let me explain...

Originally created by the talented Len Wein (who helped pulled the X-men from obscurity to popularity, then let Chris Clairmont take the writing credit) and Marv Wolfman (who helped reform The Teen Titans into the powerhouse property DC still makes hard jing and stumbles over today), Ulysses Bloodstone was created during the time when adventure characters like Conan and Thor were rolling hard in the Marvel Universe. Originally a barbarian from the Hyborian Age (Conan's era btw), this blonde dude walks into a glowing cave to see a big demon screwing with a large red stone. realizing the demon was evil our barbarian smashes the gem, causing it to explode and wipe out his village, but at the same time sending shards of the big red gem through the mantle to multiple different places in the world. All except for one important piece, and that one embeds itself into the barbarian's chest keeping him alive, eternal, extra healthy (complete with quick healing factor that includes growing back any lost limbs), and able to carry on the fight with the surviving demon, who has made it a goal to recollect all the gem pieces and finish what he started- which of course is the end of the world as we know it. SO, this barbarian survives on earth throughout time, fighting the evil demon dude (as well as amassing a fortune, tons of lives worth of experience, LOTS of little red gem shards that he keeps hidden, and a hard-on for revenge again this demon dude (who's name I'm not taking the time to type here correctly, but I really never took the time to try to pronounce it right when it was first out either- and knowing Marvel, they've probably spelt it a half dozen different ways by now anyway). this demon dude tries to kill Bloodstone many,many times and screw with him, find his stashes of gemstone shards, and what-not over the entire course of recorded history (which was all shrouded in legend and folktale, or just ignored and denied- Ulysses kept it on the serious down-low anyway), all the way up to modern day.

So to sum it all up, you had a totally skilled Highlander, with Wolverine's healing factor, running around throughout time and modern day, fighting a monster making demon as well as other baddies, all while trying to put a big, big gem back together again in order to reconstitute it, along with his personal shard, in order to end his life AND keep his arch nemesis from ending the world.


So Marvel was going to use Bloodstone as a lead in to Where Monsters Dwell (like they were, or had done with Kull in Creatures On The Loose), but they canned the title instead, leaving Bloodstone to gather a little dust before using him to kick off an anthology title they started called Marvel Presents. The first two installments (both written by Jack Warner) were in the first issue that were meant tot start a long running series, and yet they ended the story with the next issue in order to move on to other also shelved projects. What a waste. Pure and simple the character, if given a chance to catch on a grow, could have been a mixture of historical and modern day tales, all wrapped up in a single continuous mission. Just think of the fun and potential; Highlander, Angel, and New Amsterdam in ninja comic form, with a tight cast, a little imagination, so0me historical research, and some tenacity, this could have- no wait SHOULD HAVE been an incredible property for Marvel, and easily as iconic as Prince Valiant, or Highlander, but instead it's just scoffed at, rewritten and re-imagined by folks with MUCH less imagination, killed off, and downright defiled by "talent" that should have had a lot more respect for this character's potential. But then again, it would have meant keeping a tight sense of continuity, and that's something Marvel has repeatedly refused to do, about as much as most Americans refuse to understand Curling. It may be just way over their heads.


WAKE UP!