31 MORE Days, 31 MORE Screams: Day 26 (Kraven's Last Hunt)

(Hey kids, just wanted to pre-empt this one with a respectable plug since it's basically the reason I'm doing this. Pal of the blog, Sean Dillon, requested this one. He's also doing a great big longform psychochronography project on it, and God help him with that quest. Go check out his blog, Fearful Symmetry , for that. Now for my far less thorough and surface level take...)

Another day, another medium I've never really tried to write critical about, and another subject that makes you go "what the fuck does this have to do with Halloween?" at first glance. I wondered much the same when I looked into what this was. A 6-part Spider-Man comic? With Kraven? Fucking KRAVEN? I admit my only real Spider-Man knowledge comes from the 90's cartoon series, so I immediately recognize Kraven as "that jungle hunter fucker". Someone like the Green Goblin or Venom seems like a bigger spooky threat to Spider-Man, based on their importance to that mythos in general. That this works at all may be a minor miracle, but I'm here to tell you that it does indeed pull it off. Even better, it manages to have some gnarly and wild shit in it that makes it a good choice indeed for a spooky marathon. Let's go through it, then. Kraven's Last Hunt.

SYMBOLISM, Y'ALL

It was a dark and stormy night. It really is. We get a sense of not just Kraven the Hunter, but Kravinoff the man. A child who fled Russia during what I assume to be the October Revolution, kept in good health with jungle herbs and potions or whatever despite being well over 70. That's assuming the comic's set in its published year of 1987, but whatever. Kravinoff is plotting out one last hunt, a victory over Spider-Man... and to do this he must become the Spider. Which he accomplishes by eating a bunch of spiders or whatever. Then it's off to hunt down Spider-Man. I mentioned Venom earlier, but what's striking is that Venom haunts this story. Spider-Man's in his black suit for the entirety of it, and me with my limited knowledge knows that the black suit becomes the Venom symbiote. Here, it's just clothes. Just black clothes. He got it in a Secret War or some shit? Hell if I know. Amid the dark and stormy night, Kraven hunts. What rules this story, and the characters in it, is a simple thing: Fear. Spider-Man's fear shows up here, and through his inner monologue we can feel his paranoia and fear creeping up on his usual reactions, culminating in Kraven approaching with a rifle and a mad look in his eyes. As he closes in, we have one word for each panel, a slow draw of panicked thoughts in red intermixed with normal ones in yellow.


HE'S
OUT
OF
HIS
[BLAM]


Good lord, Spider-Man is first ambushed next to a billboard for a knockoff of Raid called Fraid. FRAID, FOR GOD'S SAKES! The Spider is dead and buried. Kraven has won his last hunt... but it's not over yet. Kraven must battle his own fear, his fear of the Spider. He does this by facing down his fear in the form of a big spider made of little spiders that's a hallucination or some shit. Once that's done, his hunt continues. In the sewers of New York, the half-man/half-rat Vermin is afraid. Afraid of the light, the world above... and of Spider-Man and Captain America, who beat him up some time in the past. In her apartment, Mary Jane Watson (Parker? Were they married at this point?) is afraid of her lover (husband?) being gone and dead. In the grave, two weeks later, Peter Parker is afraid of death. In two weeks, Kraven-as-Spider has gone on a rampage and beaten up or killed petty thugs. Vermin has fought his fear long enough to climb to the surface and start eating people. Peter rises from the grave, somehow healed, and confronts Kraven... but Kraven has already won. He has beaten the Spider and proven that he is superior. There's still the matter of Vermin left, and Peter has to fight his own fears after his near-death experience in order to stop Vermin. As for Kraven the hunter, Kravinoff the man? He swore this was his last hunt, and he is a man of his word. Kravinoff, child of Russia, shoots himself in the mouth with his rifle. Kraven victorious. Spider-Man subdues Vermin and plans to get Reed Richards to help him. Peter Parker and his love reunite, both alive and well. For now, fear has been conquered. The comic likes to quote William Blake's "The Tyger", only it replaces tyger with spyder. I AIN'T TOUCHING BLAKE but the last line of that particular stanza about "fearful symmetry" is a good summation of this comic story arc. Kraven, Spider-Man, Vermin, and Mary Jane all share their own fears and anxieties over the story, a fearful symmetry in quartet. Their fears vary, but they permeate the story as we go. Kraven's Last Hunt is pretty danged good, and its heavy use of fear makes it a good fit for the marathon. So, that's two mediums I've never talked about before done. Fuck, maybe I should do a poem next.


Nah, let's go back to a movie or a TV show or something.