{"id":2260,"date":"2019-11-25T00:00:18","date_gmt":"2019-11-25T04:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deweybass.com\/spiderman\/?p=2260"},"modified":"2019-05-31T11:52:16","modified_gmt":"2019-05-31T15:52:16","slug":"sm-50","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2019\/11\/25\/sm-50\/","title":{"rendered":"SM 50"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Anniversaries should be something to celebrate. How do you celebrate when your job is to make Spider-Man comics sad? Let\u2019s see. Vladimir Kravinov has come to the US, and is trying to follow in his father\u2019s footsteps. He\u2019s in the brownstone where Kraven died, running around nude like Kraven did, holding a knife and the journal he got from Hobgoblin. He fights and kills 3 ninja-ish guys as part of his \u201ctest.\u201d
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Even got the orange narration boxes like his dad. Then he yells at his dad that The Spider dies tonight and smashes through a window, still nude, as his main man Gregor worries that this will all end in tragedy. So, if you\u2019re Howard Mackie & Tom Lyle, really, really, really riding the coattails of the famous Kraven\u2019s Last Hunt while working side-by-side with its writer every month\u2026 does this feel weird? Awkward? Exciting? I just wonder. Anyway, how\u2019s our guy?
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Still being stupid? Just making sure. It\u2019s MJ on the phone, begging him to come to the hospital. This is the week after ASM 393 came out, so MJ has already left town. Unlike all the stuff I\u2019ve been wrestling with trying to read these in some kind of order, there\u2019s no explanation for that particular continuity issue. It doesn\u2019t matter, he just leaves without answering. He\u2019s decided tonight he\u2019s taking out a mass murderer called \u201cThe Pale Rider,\u201d a real 90s stereotype who\u2019s just randomly killing people in the street with no known motive. Spider-Man thinks the cops haven\u2019t been able to track him down as he finds the guy real easily, standing in the middle of the street, and drops on top of him. Seemed pretty easy to me.
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\u201cThe Spider\u201d has apparently decided he\u2019s just gonna hop around fighting people for the rest of his life. The fact that he\u2019s decided to selfishly abandon his family in time of great need to help people is\u2026 hard to parse. This \u201cI am The Spider\u201d crap would play better if he stopped superheroing, too, but then, what would the books be about? It\u2019s almost like this was a bad idea.
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There he is, all geared up. Especially for a 90s costume, it\u2019s not bad. Got the lion motif like dad, but not openly copying his dad (And since Kraven is one of the silliest looking villains of all time, good choice, kid). Tougher looking, more dangerous looking. It\u2019s the 90s, so he\u2019s inexplicably got 14 belts on, plus 5 straps around his ankles, but that\u2019s just a sign o\u2019 the times. You could do worse, especially in 1994.
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He\u2019s really lost it. Also: Ring guy broke into Aunt May\u2019s? Who is this guy? The reveal is comin\u2019 up shortly. Why is Spider-Man there, though? What business does \u201cThe Spider\u201d have this far out of town? Back in the city, Vlad & Gregor are flying around in a helicopter, looking for Spider-Man. Vlad\u2019s ready to do his thing. Gregor says he\u2019ll be in sight at all times if anything goes wrong, but Vlad\u2019s not hearing that. He finds a shred of Spider-Man\u2019s costume on a roof (How lucky!), and now he\u2019s got Spidey\u2019s scent, he\u2019s off to avenge his dad. Gregor wonders \u201cWhat have we done?\u201d for the 2nd time this issue. Back at the house\u2026
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If there was a comic where Peter got that journal, I haven\u2019t seen it. I find it really unlikely that he has it. It makes him think about the time he had to fight a clone of himself, and then think about Kraven\u2019s Last Hunt, saying they all tried to destroy him, to be him, but they failed. I suppose that\u2019s a fair comparison. Then he smashes through the attic window of his beloved Aunt\u2019s house while no one\u2019s around to take care of it and leaves. He goes to the cemetery where Uncle Ben is buried, where he finds an old man being mugged. His two assailants run, but then bolos fly out of the night and snap their necks. Guess who?
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Baby Kravey zaps him with his electrified glove, then darts him in the neck. It\u2019s the same drug from Kraven\u2019s Last Hunt, of course. He says this puts them on even ground (Does it, tho?). He tells Spidey he is Vladimir, son of Sergei Kravinoff. Hm. They\u2019ve been spelling it \u201cKravinov.\u201d I was pretty sure it was \u201cKravinoff,\u201d but the new spelling seemed more Russian, so I doubted myself. Pick one! Anyway, he informs Spider-Man he is now to be called The Grim Hunter. Eh. Had to be called something, I guess. The 90s.
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Spidey bats the knife out of Grim\u2019s hand, then runs away. He tries to swing up on top of a nearby bridge, but Grim is now shooting lasers from his spear. This guy\u2019s gear is pretty far removed from his dad\u2019s. As Spidey plunges into the water, something happens:
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Having suddenly reclaimed his humanity, Spidey whups the crap out of Grim Hunter in a single page. But then Gregor shows up in the helicopter. He tells Spidey to back away or be fired on, but Spider-Man just leaps up on to the helicopter, drags Gregor out and lets it crash below them.
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Greg\u2019s no more into this than Spidey is. Spidey webs them up to drag them off to the cops for killing those guys at the cemetery. He says he\u2019s got his own legacy to live up to, and he\u2019s doing what he vowed long ago to do, as Spider-Man. Is this the end of the darkness? Nope! There follows a brief backup story that shows Kraven \u201cMost Dangerous Gaming\u201d Vladimir as a child to help teach him to be tough, and then we\u2019re out.
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Anniversaries should be something to celebrate. How do you celebrate when your job is to make Spider-Man comics sad? Let\u2019s see. Vladimir Kravinov has come to the US, and is trying to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2412,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[420,415,418,45,417,2,416],"class_list":["post-2260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-grim-hunter","tag-howard-mackie","tag-kevin-tinsley","tag-kraven-the-hunter","tag-scott-hanna","tag-spider-man","tag-tom-lyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2260"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4594,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2260\/revisions\/4594"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}