• =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Kraven=92s?= Last Hunt: How A Dark Spider-Man Story Actu

    From Ubiquitous@21:1/5 to All on Sat Jun 10 05:58:22 2017
    XPost: alt.comics.spider-man

    1987 was a somewhat transitional year for comic book storytelling, as
    the popularity of DC Comics’ Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and
    Watchmen showed that superhero comics didn’t have to be bright and
    cheery in order to be successful – and enormously successful, at that. Subsequently, one of Marvel Comics’ first attempts to turn down the
    lights on one of its own characters met with great success of its own,
    in the form of J.M. DeMatteis and Mike Zeck’s “Kraven’s Last Hunt,” the
    classic six-issue arc that ran through Web of Spider-Man, Amazing
    Spider-Man, and Spectacular Spider-Man.

    While outwardly seen as Marvel’s attempt to copy DC’s success, the
    story idea had actually been based on one that DeMatteis reportedly had developed years earlier. With the unprecedented attention given to Dark
    Knight and Watchmen, the wake of these acclaimed stories seemed to be
    the perfect time to bring DeMatteis’ own to fruition, and its continued popularity over the past three decades has proven that it was one that
    deserved telling.

    Why A Dark Spider-Man Story Shouldn’t Have Worked

    The telling of such a dark Spider-Man story, though, was a bold move
    for a character typically known for his jovial wit and wisecracks.
    There was outright skepticism at the time of the story’s publication by
    many who saw DeMatteis and Zeck’s arc as little more than an execution
    of Marvel’s attempt to cash in on its competitor’s success. The
    already-grim Batman, after all, lent himself to being darkened a little further, but the happy-go-lucky Spider-Man meant that Marvel had a
    tougher sell to its readership and a larger gap to bridge regarding a
    darker story featuring its flagship character than DC did with its own.

    There are even those who accused DeMatteis of unabashed plagiarism for
    his usage of William Blake’s classic poem The Tyger, referencing the
    same “fearful symmetry” verse within his story that Alan Moore had
    quoted in Watchmen. The dual usage, of course, was coincidental – the
    final issue of Watchmen saw publication the same month as the first
    installment of “Kraven’s Last Hunt,” and the only real similarities
    between Moore and DeMatteis’ stories are the themes involving the idea
    of symmetry, with both drawing from the same inspiration: Blake’s
    poetry.

    Why A Dark Spider-Man Story DID Work

    Spidey’s journey to the dark side was ironically made a little easier
    by way of another controversial element in the web-slinger’s mythos:
    his newer black costume, which still had yet to win over much of
    Spider-Man’s fanbase. The perpetually dark atmosphere of DeMatteis and
    Zeck’s story – whether it was the stormy, nighttime skies or the dark
    sewers beneath the streets – served as the perfect environment for
    Spidey to don his modern outfit. “Kraven’s Last Hunt” was arguably the best-suited, pun intended, storyline to showcase Spider-Man’s oft-
    maligned new uniform, and perhaps unintentionally, helped win over the undecided and perhaps ensure that the costume would remain entrenched
    in Spidey’s world, even if the overall look ended up belonging to
    Venom, who was introduced a few months later.

    The nature of DeMatteis’ story also helped ease Spider-Man into a
    darker world, as poor Spidey was merely a victim of Kraven’s
    machinations – he didn’t become the darkness, he merely responded to
    it. After all, even the happiest and most care-free among us would
    react badly to being buried alive for two weeks and having our good
    name sullied in the meantime. Any other time, an abrupt change-of-tone
    or mood swing from the previous storyline would have seemed contrived
    and opportunistic. Changing tastes, though, made the readership at
    large ready for such a move, and DeMatteis’ story provided the device
    to make such a move seem plausible. Spidey having an outfit in the
    closet that was perfect for such an occasion only helped make “Kraven’s
    Last Hunt” a well-timed and welcome breath of fresh air.

    Why A Dark Spider-Man Story Became A Classic

    It was a time when fans were ready for such a story, and DeMatteis and
    Zeck delivered. Evoking the same kind of surprise that Walt Simonson
    did when he had first taken over Thor a few years earlier, “Kraven’s
    Last Hunt” was the Spider-Man story that no one knew they wanted. In
    fact, some didn’t realize it wasn’t really a Spider-Man story as much
    as it was a Kraven The Hunter story – so all-encompassing and
    engrossing was DeMatteis and Zeck’s story that readers were transported
    into the mind of Kraven himself. It was a treatment that the villain
    had rarely, if ever, received, and one that made this story one of the
    most worthwhile sendoffs of a character in comics history – an
    especially meaningful sendoff in the days when the death of such a
    character in a comic book story was believed to be permanent.

    While seen as an atypical storyline 30 years ago, its influence on
    today’s comic storytelling has ironically given the story a kind of
    modern feel that allows it to stand up well in modern times, and
    certainly better than many of the more typical comic stories of the
    era. The story’s biggest fault might be one that’s really the fault of publishing practices of the day – written at a time where comic books
    were almost exclusively consumed an issue at a time, the issue-over-
    issue repetitiveness of DeMatteis’ script makes the story at times a
    little overly repetitious in collected form. Conversely, though, the
    collected volume gives the story a cohesiveness that only came with
    rereading previous chapters in the past – an often necessary activity
    back in the pre-trade paperback days in order to best enjoy multi-issue
    arcs.

    In 1987, “Kraven’s Last Hunt” hit that sweet spot between the advent of
    darker superhero stories and the arrival of the so-called “grim ‘n
    gritty” era of the ’90s. Creators for both mainstream and alternative publishers ultimately killed that darkly-golden goose, with characters
    who relied on lots of scowling, over-the-top posturing, and grisly
    displays of violence in an attempt to replicate and one-up the truly
    innovative work of writers like Frank Miller, Moore, and DeMatteis.
    Remaining one of the most-remembered and fondly recalled arcs in over
    five decades of Spider-Man stories, “Kraven’s Last Hunt” clearly was
    the darker Spidey story fans wanted – even if they didn’t realize it at
    the time.

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