Believe it or not, this is the beginning of the famous Kraven’s Last Hunt story. That’s crazy. I never really realized this was the timeline until last year, but: Peter proposes in ASM 290, MJ accepts in 292, they get married immediately, we’re told they’re on their honeymoon for two weeks, and THE VERY NEXT ISSUE begins one of the darkest Spider-Man stories of all time. 2 weeks into their marriage, maybe the worst thing that’s ever happened to Peter to this point is about to happen. That is wild.
In 1986, comics kinda began to grow up. Not that there hadn’t been comics that could be fully enjoyed by adult audiences for decades, but material more squarely aimed at adults and not all-ages began to take off in the mainstream for the first time. 86 was a crazy year for comics, with comics like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns pushing the boundaries of just how “adult” mainstream comics could be. And, entirely by accident, if you ask the creators behind them, opening the floodgates to a wave of “dark, gritty” superhero material that would engulf most of the 1990s in incredibly childish humorlessness and ultraviolence masquerading as comics for an older audience. But in addition to a tonal shift, books like the above-mentioned ones also started a wave of deconstruction in superhero comics, tearing down the icons to see what makes them tick. And that’s the mode of this story.
This 6-part crossover running through all 3 Spidey books is by JM DeMatties, Mike ZeckBob McLeod & several colorists. I’ve noted before that DeMatties alternates between silly and suffering in his Spider-Man work, and he we have him at his most grim. So strap in, kids, for Kraven’s Last Hunt.
Like most grim-dark 80s stories, this one has 1st person narration, from Kraven in this scene that opens the issue, with him crouching nude in a dark, smokey room, like you do. He proceeds to fight a bunch of dangerous animals barehanded while narrating about how scary he is…
Yeah, the animals all turns out to be stuffed and, you know, not alive. He truly is a great hunter. As he finally does us the service of putting a robe on, he narrates about how he’s old now. How he fled Russia as a child with his parents after the fall of the Czar, because Russia “had no more room for aristocrats. For culture. For honor.”
I think the record on this blog shows that “honor” has never meant anything to Kraven until now, but I guess romanticizing your own legacy is a pastime for people like him. He continues internal monologuing as he walks into a room in his weird house that looks like a church, with a coffin on the altar, narrating to himself about how he’s found dignity and honor and whatnot in the jungle and the hunt instead of society. This man has literally hunted and enslaved humans for sport.
We leave him to weep at a Spider-Man mask to join Spidey himself, who is now also narrating in wildly out of character 80s tough guy fashion.
The hoods say they took up a collection to pay for “a decent box and a piece of ground” before Spider-Man swoops down, narrating about how scary he is to people. But he says he’s not here to fight.
Then he swings home, thinking about the inevitability of death as he gets out of his Spidey suit and into bed (MJ notably absent. Maybe this issue was completed before the creative team knew about the marriage?). Then, DeMatteis & Zeck really lay out how insanely silly this “very mature” comic book is going to be, in case you hadn’t picked up on it yet.
Yeah, man, in preparation to fight Spider-Man, Kraven is going to eat his weight in spiders. I mean, what? This got past an editorial process without people openly giggling? “So edgy, so fresh!” Peter Parker wakes up from a nightmare about spiders crawling all over him (Still no MJ) as Kraven continues the all-you-can-eat spider buffet, and then Spider-Man heads out into the night.
I’m not 100% on this, but I don’t think Kraven has even seen Spider-Man in his black suit in person. “So black. So beautiful.” That seems like a good segue to bring up the fact that all Kraven’s lackeys, like his helicopter pilot and the guy endlessly digging a grave in this issue, are mute, unnamed black men, which isn’t uncomfortable AT ALL. Kraven decrees to himself that he can’t die until he’s destroyed Spider-Man, while a voice in Spider-Man’s head that isn’t his (???) tells him he can’t shake the feeling that something is out there waiting for him. Wait, it gets sillier:
Like… seriously? “Spyder spyder?” I am getting secondhand embarrassment from this. The red boxes are the other voice in Spidey’s head, you figure this narrative device out if you want, I’m not gonna. Spidey falls down, sees the ghost of Joe Face because he is now trippin’ balls, and then finally sees Kraven.
Eaten of your flesh! Kraven whacks our addled hero in the face with a stick yelling “Let honor be restored!” and Spidey goes tumbling. In this moment, Spidey starts to read more like, you know, the character we’ve known for the last 292 issues, except for the red boxes. Kraven gets some kind of super strong net over him and drops down to where he fell.
They stare at each other for a second, and then Kraven shoots. Soon, back at Kraven’s estate, it’s raining, and he and his goons are holding a silent funeral for Spider-Man, who’s in the coffin we saw earlier, about to be lowered into the grave being dug all issue.
Kraven weeps as he and the guys finish filling in the grave, and then that asinine “Spyder, spyder” poem repeats, and we’re too be continued.
This is what Frank Miller has wrought, intentionally or unintentionally. I can’t pretend to know, but I’d bet you Miller would never have considered doing a cartoonishly dark Spider-Man comic at this time. Maybe not now, either. He did it with Daredevil and Batman, but it WORKED for Daredevil and Batman. When he & Denny O’Neil were cooking up Spidey stories for ASM & MTU Annuals a few years prior to this, even as he was doing his legendary and very dark Daredevil run, they weren’t like this. Because Spider-Man shouldn’t be like this, and they knew that. But the runaway success of The Dark Knight Returns started a snowball rolling down hill, and now an avalanche of pointlessly grim-dark nonsense is coming for us. And because it was so novel at the time, some of it, like this, is even held up as classic. But memorable isn’t the same thing as good. It is my humble opinion that this critically acclaimed mess doesn’t hold up at all in an era where comics actually have come to offer a diverse array of stories for adults instead of stuff like this. I mean, look, we’ve barely begun this 6-part story and it’s already apparent both hero and villain have to be written totally out of character for it to work. “This isn’t the Kraven I know!” Indeed it isn’t. Why is Peter talking like an Elmore Leonard character? Since when does Kraven care about honor, or Russia for that matter? If your story requires totally unrecognizable versions of the characters to work, your story is bad.
Is my blatant contempt for this kind of try-hard, ironically-childish-while-trying-to-seem-adult darkness really going to be this obvious the entire six issues? Could be! Either way, Spider-Man is dead! The end!
The ad on the back cover of this issue, aimed at what at the time was still comics’ target demographic, almost seems to be mocking the uber-serious anti-fun it follows. Like you finish reading Spider-Man being shot and buried by his lunatic enemy and then
Kinda hilarious.