Deacon Frost

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

In the comics, Deacon Frost was depicted as a tall white haired late middle aged gentleman with red eyes, and wearing 1860s Germany period clothing. His doppelgänger sported an accent and attire that suggested a Southern preacher.

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
Deacon 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 held by Dracula.

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 doppelgangers. 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, 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, 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 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.

Ultimate Deacon Frost
The Ultimate version of Deacon Frost appears with a youthful appearance. He has been captured by Nick Fury in order to convince Blade to join his Black Ops team.

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 (genetically altered to be more powerful) and humans (believing 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 named Edgar 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 bent on world domination.

Film

 * Deacon Frost appeared as the main antagonist of the 1998 film Blade, portrayed by Stephen Dorff. Although the movie retains the character's upstart ambitions, he was a younger and more updated version for the 1990s. Deacon 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 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 killed by Blade's use of EDTA darts, which caused him to explode.


 * Deacon Frost was mentioned in Blade II as not being well liked in the vampire community. Vampire warlord Eli Damaskinos and lawyer/"familiar" Karl Kounen said that Blade "actually did [them] a favor" for killing Frost.


 * Stephen Dorff told Wordpass.com in 2009 that there was a Deacon Frost prequel trilogy in development and Stephen Norrington will be involved in the project.

Video games
Deacon Frost appears as the main antagonist on the Blade table in Marvel Pinball.