Kraven’s Last Hunt is a six issue series that crossed over all three Spider-Man books in 1987. It takes place in Web of Spider-Man #31-32, Amazing Spider-Man #293-294 and Spectacular Spider-Man #131-132, it is written by J.M. DeMatteis and drawn by Mike Zeck, both men are huge in comics and pretty much anything they work on is worth a look.
So Kraven is a classic Spider-Man villain, he first showed up in Amazing Spider-Man #15 in the early ‘60s and has been a regular foe ever since. He pretty regularly got the crap knocked out of him by Spidey, so while he was one of Spider-Man’s main rogues he was never on the level of Doc Ock, Venom or the Goblins. Kraven’s repeated losses combined with all the “potions” he used to try and level the field with Spider-Man have driven him completely insane. He blames “The Spider” for everything from his parents being forced to flee Russia when the Tsars fell to his current status as lame villain. The way to correct this he decides is to beat The Spider, take it’s place and do things The Spider couldn’t do.
To do this Kraven hunts Spidey, tranqs him, shoots him point blank with a rifle and then buries him (alive as it turns out) on the grounds of his mansion. Kraven then dons a Spider-Man suit and takes his place in New York City to be a better Spidey. He also seems to get crazier, doing things like diving into rooms full of spiders to “fight” them and, well, eat them. At the same time NYC is trying to deal with someone the papers call “The Cannibal Killer” so I’m pretty sure you know what he is doing, the important part is who he is and that is Vermin a mutated and crazed person. In the past Captain America and Spidey teamed up and just barely managed to stop him. So of course Kraven needs to stop him solo to prove how much better he is.
Over the course of two weeks Kraven stalks Vermin while fighting crime, the problem is he attacks people as brutally as possible and eventually kills someone leading to the police blaming Spider-Man. Kraven does find Vermin and brutalizes him to make him fear and hate Spider-Man and then cages him to wait for Spidey to escape the grave. As the drugs that slowed Spider-Man’s metabolism wear off he get out of the grave only to find out what has been happening while he has been gone. There is a lot of Spidey dealing with everything that happened and how it affected him.
Now we’re at the point where anything else I say spoils the rest of the story but as you may have gathered by what I’ve presented to this point this is a very dark story and the rest does get darker. Back when it came out it was really quite shocking, while rereading it I was rather surprised to see it had the Comics Code Seal on all the issues. DeMatteis is telling how it’s going to end from the very beginning and it’s not the normal hand the baddie over to the cops for one of the two villains but it is a very good story.
This story is still having an effect on Spider-Man universe to the present time so besides being a good one it is also an important one. But if you really need the all happy ending google this story before picking up the collected edition to be sure it’s a story for you, however if a dark storyline is OK then check out one of the major “I can’t believe they are doing this” comics of it’s day. And as usual I’m skimming here there is a lot more to the 6 issues but why ruin the fun by telling you everything.
Comics My Mom Should Read 