Kraven The Hunter

Now I don’t know anyone who is like super excited to go see Kraven the Hunter. It truly is one of the most random heroes that they could have chosen to center a movie on. But it is a comic book movie which means here I am doing background.

Kraven first appeared like a lot of heroes and villains in the Marvel universe, in a Spiderman comic. Specifically Spiderman #15 in 1964. He continued in Spiderman’s orbit for most of his comic book appearances, and he is one of the original Sinister Six.

Kraven was clearly inspired by The Most Dangerous Game. He in fact calls Spiderman “the most dangerous game” for those of you who don’t know The Most Dangerous Game is an incredible but terrifying short novel about a rich man that lures people to his private island so that he can hunt them for sport. Kraven is a big game hunter who sees Spiderman as the most worthy adversary so he makes it his mission to beat him and declare himself the best hunter.

Because Kraven lives by some sort of personal honor code he has often been depicted as more of an antihero than a villain. Like many comic book characters he was killed off in his most famous story. Kraven’s Last Hunt said goodbye to Kraven in 1987. But no comic book deaths truly last, so he soon comes back as a ghost because that makes perfect sense.

He really doesn’t use many weapons, bows and arrows, guns, he really prefers to hunt with his bare hands. And as such he takes a serum that increases his strength and slows his aging.

Because comic books love the drama, Chameleon is his half brother. And they attack Spiderman together.

Let’s go back to Kraven’s Last Hunt for a second, though it might be Kraven’s most famous story it certainly isn’t good. I’m so sorry, people are going to disagree with me and I simply couldn’t care less. My major problem with this story is that Kraven is a warrior, he may be a little overconfident but he sees himself as a warrior. Warriors don’t commit suicide because they are getting too old to defeat Spiderman. It just seems really out of character to me. And I get that his storylines get repetitive, fights Spidey, loses to Spidey, vows to destroy Spidey rinse repeat and they wanted to do something different but I just can’t get behind this storyline. I’m so sorry.

All that said, the Grim Hunt where Kraven is resurrected as far more psychopathic, and ends up beating his kids and killing his wife makes far more sense to me. Is it pleasant? No of course not, but he’s a villain and as he is based off of a fairly psychotic concept it makes more sense to his character. It just does. It's what his character should always have been.

And then of course the retcons start, it is revealed that Kraven was actually a member of Nick Fury’s version of the Avengers that included Namora, Sabertooth and Silver Sable.

I swear to god Squirrel Girl is the funniest thing to ever happen to the Marvel universe. Not only is she canonically one of the strongest characters in Marvel but she reforms Kraven, makes him her buddy. She makes him realize that Spiderman is not even close to being the most dangerous prey in the Marvel Universe. She’s great.

Then we just get properly comic book campy. When you think goofy ass comics you should think Hunted and the Great Hunt. Because how else do you describe a storyline that includes 87 clones being made of Kraven so that they could all hunt each other to be declared the Last Son of Kraven. Or Kraven and a small team he has assembled hunting only animal themed heroes and villains. That’s some proper comic book camp right there.

Kraven is inherently a hilarious comic book character. He’s got a couple of serious storylines, sure, but mostly he is campy as hell, And that doesn’t seem to be the angle they took with the movie. Now if they went the fully psychotic route I am okay with that as well but I really don’t think that they did that either. So I guess we will see.