Issue(s): Amazing Spider-Man: Soul of the Hunter
Cover Date: 1992
Title: "Soul of the hunter"
Credits:
J.M. DeMatteis - Writer
Mike Zeck - Penciler
Bob McLeod - Inker
Eric Fein - Assistant Editor
Danny Fingeroth - Editor

Review/plot:
This is the most boring comic i've ever read. Supposedly it's a response to complaints about Kraven committing suicide in Kraven's Last Hunt. In practice, it's a book full of Peter moping around, starting at the funeral of his friend and ESU colleague Roger Hochberg's mother...

...because he feels responsible for Kraven's death. And then some Ghost of Suicide's Past comes and gives Spider-Man a chance to let Kraven's animated corpse kill him, i guess?

And Spider-Man decides not to let Kraven kill him, so now we've all learned our lesson that suicide is bad mmmmmkay?

This seems to free up Kraven's soul as well.

I don't think we ever needed an anti-suicide PSA. Kraven was a crazy villain. The story of his death was of course not endorsing suicide. And that story was smarter than this one. It recognized depression as a sickness, whereas here Spider-Man chooses to not take "the coward's way out". In fact, as far as a PSA goes, it misses the point entirely. If you really wanted to do an anti-suicide story, the message should be along the lines of if you find yourself depressed and considering suicide, you should seek help. You don't go fight a zombie in the graveyard and realize that you need to have courage and then everything's all better.

But even if you ignore that, it's just an extremely boring story where almost nothing happens. One pivotal moment, which could have been a couple of scenes in a regular comic book, and 45 pages of Peter just going around moaning, and then the padded zombie fight. It didn't even occur to me that Peter was supposed to be feeling suicidal until the moment where he switched; i thought he was just feeling guilty and/or traumatized over his experience with Kraven. This doesn't deserve to be an epilogue to Kraven's Last Hunt, even though it is the same creative team.

Quality Rating: D

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: This story is referenced in Spectacular Spider-Man #178 as something that has "finally" happened, so this should take place not long before that. It's left ambiguous if the fight with Kraven's body and the appearance of his soul and the ghost really happened, but the fight does take place at the graveyard where Kraven is buried, so i'm counting it as an appearance.

References:

• Uncle Ben died in Amazing Fantasy #15.
  
• Kraven died in Amazing Spider-Man #294.
  
• Captain Stacy died in Amazing Spider-Man #90.
  
• Gwen Stacy died in Amazing Spider-Man #121.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Fnord, I disagree with your remarks concerning Kraven's suicide. No, Kraven's Last Hunt didn't endorse suicide but I could see how it could be interpreted that way. It's not just that the villain killed himself. Peter never explicitly says that Kraven killing himself was wrong. Also, Kraven says some things that many of the readers will agree with- like how there's no room for honor and human dignity in today's world. I also don't think that Kraven's Last Hunt recognized depression as a sickness in the way that you're thinking of. The original story showed Kraven as whining about how there's no room in today's world for human dignity today while Peter IS HELPING TO PAY FOR A FUNERAL- it's the old idea that a jerk sits around and whines about how unfair life is while a righteous man does something to make it less unfair. Also, keep in mind that DeMatteis portrayed Kraven as a Russian aristocrat who was proud of his heritage but seemed oblivious to the injustices of pre-revolutionary Russia. Kraven thinks he's won since he's proved himself a "superior" fighter to Peter but doesn't understand that Peter is too down to Earth to make being the best the most important thing in his life- what's important to him is his responsibilities to protect people. Which is pretty much a reflection of what happened with Russia- for its pretenses of "honor", the ruling class was incapable of putting the people's welfare first, so eventually large numbers of Russians turned to the Bolsheviks, who promised to do so but of course in practice turned out to be Not So Different than the old ruling class.
My point is that Kraven isn't a "normal" man suffering from depression- he's a lost and corrupted soul.

At some point, usually after they have kids, a lot of creative types turn into "dad creative types" and start second guessing themselves about plot points because they think a little kid might emulate it.

This comic comes from the same place as Spielberg changing the guns into walkie talkies in ET.

At least Spielberg later came to his sense and retracted that version.

To add insult to a bad story, Zeck doesn't seem to be on his game at all here. McLeod's not helping, either. And I love some 80s Zeck.

Sometimes I wonder if I think too much like DeMatteis to appreciate his writing. His writing rarely bothers or excites me quite as much as the average reader seems to.

Kraven's Last Hunt features what logically should be significant developments, but I still think of it as an overlong, underveloped, way decompressed story. Not being a fan of Mike Zeck probably doesn't help either. A sequel to that story would be one that examines Robbie and Mary Jane's unspoken understanding that they will avoid speaking aloud about Robbie knowing of Peter's dual identity, yet they know and trust each other if it comes to that.

Kraven finally freaking out (after plenty of previous warning) and eventually collapsing? That is sort of assumed. It failed to make much of an impression to me. Most of Kraven's appearances to date were somewhat desperate attempts of proving to himself that he was a worthy hunter. DeMatteis just ran with it to its logical extent and included some stuff with Peter and Vermin.

God almighty, DeMatteis having Peter have all this extreme PTSD about Kraven's Last Hunt so many years after it was actually published is bloody terrible. It reeks of the Peter David style "ignore anything inbetween me" attitude. There was plenty of things DeMatteis could've used if he really wanted to have a traumatized Peter, but instead he only mines his own story that is very irrelevant by this point. Then of course having Peter constantly insist on it's lasting effect on him after years and years of it never crossing his mind is just really bad. Reads like DeMatteis is desperate to have Kraven's Last Hunt be a huge monumental event up there with Uncle Ben and Gwen's deaths in Spider-Man mythos.

I know They mentioned it in Spectacular as something that finally happened, but I think that was error on their part.

Looking at the PTSD vibe of the story and the fact that building we see right after MJ and Peter comes back from the funeral is clearly Bedford Towers that is definitelly flashback story taking place shortly after Kraven Last Hunt.

fnord works with what is said in the stories themselves whenever possible, so you're not going to convince him to budge on this one.

This time I was not trying to. This time I wanted to point out something No one seemed to mention in comments

On the side not and for future references: I already gave up trying to suggest any changes here that requires argumentation and convincing, cause I realized it pointless. I only made exception for Spider-Man #19 Diablo story, cause there is editor's note inside, and even fnord can't come up with an excuse not to move it {at least I hope so}

So If I point out anything like the Bedford Towers appearance in the future it is only to enlighten people reading comments, not to argue agains fnord

That panel in the top scan doesn't look like Zeck at all.