In this feature, I spotlight storylines that have been, well, left unresolved. Click here for an archive of all storylines featured so far.
Today we look at the Avengers villain who took over a country and the Avengers just left him there.
Sean Dolan first appeared in Roy Thomas' 1990 Black Knight series. He became Black Knight (Dane Whitman)'s squire. The Irish young man continued as a supporting character with Black Knight whenever Black Knight would show up in places.
In 1993's Avengers Annual #22, writer Glenn Herdling and artist Scott McDaniel took part in Marvel's "Create a character" Annual theme from that year (an approach that led to very few long-lasting characters and a famously ironic statement by Mark Gruenwald about how these characters were built to last, unlike Squirrel Girl). They took Sean Dolan and made him take on Black Knight's ebony blade (which Black Knight had stopped using at the time in favor of basically a lightsaber that he had built himself) and become Bloodwraith...
He fights Black Knight for free passage (in the fight, Dane actually gives him his name) and wins...
He shows up again in Avengers #366 (in a story by Herdling) where Deadpool tries to steal the ebony blade, leading to a three-way fight...
The story is kind of messed up, as Dane's former love interest, Victoria Bentley, sacrifices herself to the ebony blade, guessing (correctly) that her pure soul will sate the bloodlust for now. That was a weird, weird sacrifice.
Herdling used Bloodwraith again when Herdling became the writer on Namor's ongoing series. Herdling seemingly brought the character full circle in an Avengers Unplugged story where Bloodwraith gained the alternate reality ebony blade of the Avengers villain, Proctor, and became the BLACK Wraith. In the end, he gives up Proctor's sword and the Avengers decide to let him go, content in his claim that he'll control the curse.
Meanwhile, in 1994, a small country named Slorenia was introduced in the pages of Force Works #4...
A few years later, in Avengers (Volume 3) #19-20, Kurt Busiek and George Perez had Ultron destroy the entire country...
Go to the next page to see how these two stories intersected!
So in Avengers #36, the Avengers show up in Slorenia to see that the Bloodwraith is back and he's HUGE!
In the following issue, we see what happened...
In the end, the Scarlet Witch is able to bond him to Slorenia, but that's it.
The Avengers and SHIELD continue to monitor things, though, as seen in Avengers #40...
And that's it. That's the last time we ever see the Bloodwraith. Kurt Busiek was soon caught up in his epic Kang Dynasty storyline and he left the title soon after finishing it, so he never got a chance to wrap the Bloodwraith story up and obviously future Avenger writers never chose to do so, either.
Just recently, though, Warren Ellis and Mike McKone did a graphic novel, Avengers: Endless Wartime, that shows Slorenia rebuilding itself (while also seemingly moving its spot on the atlas), so I guess the Bloodwraith is gone somehow?
The HOW of it all is, well, as I noted, unresolved.
If YOU have a suggestion for an interesting comic book story that was left unresolved, drop me a line at bcronin@comicbookresources.com (not in the comments section)!