{"id":2014,"date":"2019-10-11T00:00:32","date_gmt":"2019-10-11T04:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deweybass.com\/spiderman\/?p=2014"},"modified":"2019-05-26T00:14:50","modified_gmt":"2019-05-26T04:14:50","slug":"web-031","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2019\/10\/11\/web-031\/","title":{"rendered":"WEB 031"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Believe it or not, this is the beginning of the famous Kraven\u2019s Last Hunt story. That\u2019s 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\u2019re told they\u2019re 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\u2019s ever happened to Peter to this point is about to happen. That is wild.
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In 1986, comics kinda began to grow up. Not that there hadn\u2019t 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 \u201cadult\u201d mainstream comics could be. And, entirely by accident, if you ask the creators behind them, opening the floodgates to a wave of \u201cdark, gritty\u201d 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\u2019s the mode of this story.
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This 6-part crossover running through all 3 Spidey books is by JM DeMatties, Mike ZeckBob McLeod & several colorists. I\u2019ve 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\u2019s Last Hunt.
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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\u2026
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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\u2019s old now. How he fled Russia as a child with his parents after the fall of the Czar, because Russia \u201chad no more room for aristocrats. For culture. For honor.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I think the record on this blog shows that \u201chonor\u201d 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\u2019s 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.
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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.
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The hoods say they took up a collection to pay for \u201ca decent box and a piece of ground\u201d before Spider-Man swoops down, narrating about how scary he is to people. But he says he\u2019s not here to fight.
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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 \u201cvery mature\u201d comic book is going to be, in case you hadn\u2019t picked up on it yet.
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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? \u201cSo edgy, so fresh!\u201d 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.
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I\u2019m not 100% on this, but I don\u2019t think Kraven has even seen Spider-Man in his black suit in person. \u201cSo black. So beautiful.\u201d That seems like a good segue to bring up the fact that all Kraven\u2019s lackeys, like his helicopter pilot and the guy endlessly digging a grave in this issue, are mute, unnamed black men, which isn\u2019t uncomfortable AT ALL. Kraven decrees to himself that he can\u2019t die until he\u2019s destroyed Spider-Man, while a voice in Spider-Man\u2019s head that isn\u2019t his (???) tells him he can\u2019t shake the feeling that something is out there waiting for him. Wait, it gets sillier:
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Like… seriously? \u201cSpyder spyder?\u201d I am getting secondhand embarrassment from this. The red boxes are the other voice in Spidey\u2019s head, you figure this narrative device out if you want, I\u2019m not gonna. Spidey falls down, sees the ghost of Joe Face because he is now trippin\u2019 balls, and then finally sees Kraven.
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Eaten of your flesh! Kraven whacks our addled hero in the face with a stick yelling \u201cLet honor be restored!\u201d and Spidey goes tumbling. In this moment, Spidey starts to read more like, you know, the character we\u2019ve 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.
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They stare at each other for a second, and then Kraven shoots. Soon, back at Kraven\u2019s estate, it\u2019s raining, and he and his goons are holding a silent funeral for Spider-Man, who\u2019s in the coffin we saw earlier, about to be lowered into the grave being dug all issue.
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Kraven weeps as he and the guys finish filling in the grave, and then that asinine \u201cSpyder, spyder\u201d poem repeats, and we\u2019re too be continued.
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This is what Frank Miller has wrought, intentionally or unintentionally. I can\u2019t pretend to know, but I\u2019d 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\u2019Neil 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\u2019t like this. Because Spider-Man shouldn\u2019t 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\u2019t the same thing as good. It is my humble opinion that this critically acclaimed mess doesn\u2019t 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.
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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!
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The ad on the back cover of this issue, aimed at what at the time was still comics\u2019 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
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Kinda hilarious.
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