Deacon Frost

Deacon Frost
Publication information
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First appearance	The Tomb of Dracula #13 (Oct 1973)
Created by	Marv Wolfman Gene Colan
In-story information
Notable aliases	Whitehair

Deacon Frost is a fictional character appearing in the Marvel Universe. He appears in The Tomb of Dracula and in the Blade limited series.

Publication history

Deacon Frost first appeared in The Tomb of Dracula #13 (October 1973), and was created by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan.

The character subsequently appears in The Tomb of Dracula #25 (October 1974), #33-34 (June-July 1975), #42 (March 1976), #44-51 (May-December 1976), #53 (February 1977), Blade: Vampire Hunter #6-8 (December 1994-February 1995), Blade: Crescent City Blues (March 1998), Blade: Sins of the Father (October 1998), Blade: Vampire Hunter #1/2 (1999), #3-4 (February-March 2000), #6 (May 2000), The Tomb of Dracula #4 (March 2005), and Blade #1 (November 2006).

Deacon Frost appeared as part of the "Vampires" entry in the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Deluxe Edition #20. He received an entry in All-New Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A-Z #4 (2006).

Fictional character biography

Frost was allegedly a scientist looking for the key to immortality. For one of his experiments, he kidnapped a young woman in order to inject her with the blood of a recently killed vampire. The girl's fiancé broke into the lab, and in the resulting scuffle Frost was accidentally injected with the blood himself. The result was that Frost became a vampire but due to the unusual method of his becoming a vampire, he was endowed with a unique characteristic. Anyone he turned into a vampire would generate a doppelgänger. He could create an infinite number of doppelgängers by biting each doppelgänger, and they would all be under his mental control. Frost intended to use this ability to contend for the position of Lord of Vampires, a position that was presently owned by Dracula.

Deacon Frost is the vampire responsible for the death of Blade's mother; Blade's initial mission is to exact revenge against his mother's killer. It was also Frost who turned Hannibal King into a vampire. Blade and King, while initially distrusting each other, eventually teamed up to fight Frost's army of Blade and King dopplegangers. The two of them managed to defeat and apparently destroy Frost in his underground hideout, stabbing him twice and leaving his body to be consumed as his hideout exploded.

Many years later, Blade encountered a vampire that called itself Deacon Frost. This vampire had a different appearance and personality to the original Frost, and was later identified as being a doppelgänger. The doppelgänger attempted to summon a powerful demon, only to be devoured by it. In a later one-shot story set in New Orleans, Deacon Frost was encountered yet again, but he appeared as he did in The Tomb of Dracula. He also confirmed that the previous encounter was indeed an imposter, as Blade suspected, who was created using science and magic. Blade and King, with the help of Brother Voodoo, foiled Frost's attempt to gain control of Garwood Industries through Donna Garth (daughter of Simon Garth, the so-called Living Zombie). Frost escaped this encounter vowing revenge. More recently, Frost appeared at the summons of Dracula to defend the Lord of Vampires as he underwent a magical ritual, only to be staked by Blade.

In the comics, Deacon Frost was depicted as a tall white haired late middle age gentleman with red eyes and possibly being from circa 1860s Germany as judged by his period clothing. His doppelgänger sported an accent and attire that suggested a Southern preacher.

Other versions

Ultimate Marvel

He appears in Ultimate Avengers vs. New Ultimates #2 where he has been captured by Nick Fury in order to convince Blade to join his Black Ops team.

Other media

Television

• Deacon Frost appears as the main antagonist of Marvel Anime: Blade, voiced by Tsutomu Isobe in the Japanese version and by J. B. Blanc in the English Dub. In this series, Deacon Frost is the leader of an organization he created called Existence (the symbol of the organization being a bat with DNA threads) whose membership compromises vampires (who have been genetically altered to be more powerful) and humans (who believe that by joining the organization will be left unharmed by the vampires). Frost is known as the four-fanged vampire, and famed as powerful even for vampire standards, with his organization greatly spreading in Asia, this putting him in conflict with the pure-blood vampires who have reigned Europe from many years. While responsible for many tragedies surrounding Blade and others, his past life is revealed to be tragic, having a son with a promising future killed by a vampire. Infuriated by this and by the corrupt police that would not look into the case, he decided to research vampires with help of many vampire hunters he hired, eventually turning into a vampire himself through his research to have his revenge against all vampires. Although he is also vent on world domination.

Film

File:Sd lamagra.gif

Stephen Dorff as Deacon Frost/La Magra in the 1998 film Blade.

• Deacon Frost appeared as the primary antagonist of the 1998 film Blade. He is portrayed by Stephen Dorff. Although the movie retains Frost's upstart ambitions, he was a great deal younger and more updated for the 1990s. In the film, Frost's main objective was to become La Magra, the vampire Blood god, and rid the world of humans, believing it belongs to the vampire race. After killing the House of Erebus leaders as part of the ritual, Blade and Karen Jenson (played by N'Bushe Wright) spoiled Frost's plans. Despite their efforts however, Frost managed to complete the ritual and become one with La Magra, and engaged Blade in a sword battle. During the fight, Blade managed to gain the upper hand, cutting off Frost's right arm and then proceeded to cut him in half, only for Frost's top half to re-connect and regrow his right arm. Finally, after a stand-off, Frost was destroyed by Blade's use of EDTA darts.

• In Blade II, Deacon Frost was mentioned to not be well liked in the vampire community when vampire warlord Eli Damaskinos and his lawyer/"familiar" Karl Kounen thanked Blade for killing Frost. It was said that Blade "actually did [them] a favor."

• Stephen Dorff told Wordpass.com in 2009 that there was a Deacon Frost prequel trilogy in development, in which Dorff would reprise his role as Frost, and Stephen Norrington will be involved in the project.

External links

• Deacon Frost at The Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe