Wolverine and Blade the vampire hunter just might be the two deadliest killers in Marvel Comics history. So it's about time they finally fight to decide the winner.

On the surface, there's no actual sales pitch needed for the recently announced Wolverine vs. Blade Special #1, a one-shot comic book that will pit the antiheroes against eachother in what looks to be a truly brutal battle of blades, blood, and superhuman healing factors. That's judging by the cover art for the issue, which is almost all the information Marvel has let slip. But let's be honest: hardly any fans will need more convincing, since the winner is going to have bragging rights unparalleled in the world of Marvel Comics.

The single issue (for obvious reasons) story will be penned by former Arrow showrunner Marc Guggenheim, who has experience writing the comic adventures of both Blade and Wolverine in the past. Dave Wilkins supplies the art for both cover and interiors (with a variant cover by Matteo Scalera) which Guggenheim is already hyping as the real reason fans should pick up the issue when it arrives in July. And no offense to the story Guggenheim has crafted to bring this fight to life, but if a prospective buyer isn't interested in seeing page after page of Logan vs. Daywalker bloodsport alone... this story probably isn't for you.

While Guggenheim isn't giving up any details about the actual storyline, or why Wolverine is wearing his decade-old X-Force uniform in the cover art, he did explain to Monkeys Fighting Robots that the Special "is a book that’s been — not kidding — ten years in the making. I couldn’t possibly be more excited for it to finally see publication. I think it’s worth the wait."


The synopsis for this Wolverine vs Blade Special only promises "two of the deadliest hunters ever to have stalked the night face off! Wolverine vs. Blade -- ’nuff said!" But the uniform choice we mentioned before may frame this Special as a trip down memory lane--to a fight that absolutely happened, but which Marvel readers never got the chance to see for themselves. The anticipation would have been worse had fans even known what they had missed, but the suggestion of a flashback helps keep this fight from interfering with the recent rise to the heights of the Marvel Universe enjoyed by both Wolverine and Blade.

After Wolverine returned from the dead and had his memories fully restored, he was thrown immediately into a cosmic adventure, taking a role as the next master of Thanos' Infinity Gauntlet in Wolverine: Infinity Watch. The only thing less predictable than Logan teaming up with Loki to form a one man Infinity Watch... is for Blade to become an Avenger, leading the team into battle against a global vampire civil war.

But as entertaining as both heroes have been to follow in recent months, the appeal of seeing them cross blades to decide what's harder to kill--a half-vampire with all their strengths and none of their weaknesses, or a wild man with unbreakable bones, unrend-able flesh, and a bad temper--is impossible to deny. Now the only question is: who ya got?