
The Amazing Spider-Man: Kraven’s Last Hunt (J.M. DeMatteis, Mike Zeck & Bob McLeod)
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”
This quote from the William Blake poem, The Tyger is the line that closes out the story of Kraven’s Last Hunt. A serious story that many regard as both a quintessential Spider-Man story and a must read comic book. It is a story I have read multiple times over the years because it is such a classic, I love the structure, the themes and pretty much everything to do with it really. I also like that in the long history of Spider-Man comic books this one always stands apart because it is so deathly serious. Sure other Spidey stories go to dark places but Kraven’s Last Hunt is the prototype for these stories and it goes to some really dark places.
A story brought out slap bang in the middle of the Dark Age of comics brought about by the likes of Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, DeMatteis, Zeck and McLeod’s circular tale of Kraven’s ultimate victory and end carries huge weight and meaning that allows it to stand shoulder to shoulder to those medium defining books. It cribs the best story telling techniques from both while exploring its own subject matter and characters in a very serious way. By the end of the story both you and Peter Parker have been through hell and learned something and you feel sorry for Kraven. The great hunter becomes a tragic figure as madness and revenge take over him, consuming him whole.
In fact tragedy is the perfect way to sum up this book. It is the comic book equivalent of a Shakespearean tragedy. I gleefully compare comic books to Shakespeare because there are so many similarities! I am of the belief that is Shakespeare were alive today he would either be writing comic books or soap operas. (I eagerly await the English Literature nut who stumbles across this post at some point in the future’s angry email or comment!)
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