Issue(s): Marvel Chillers #4
Cover Date: Apr 76
Title: "Night of the huntress!"
Credits:
Chris Claremont - Writer
Frank Robbins - Penciler
Vincent Colletta - Inker

Review/plot:
This is a fill-in with neither the writer or artist from last issue. Luckily, Chris Claremont is writing, so it's actually an upgrade. It's Frank Robbins on art, and while i normally don't like his cartoony style, it doesn't grate on me as much here.

Tigra is hunting down the Rat-Pack, and instead comes across a different group of gunmen in green costumes...

...and finds that these guys were hired by Kraven the Hunter.

Kraven has kidnapped a doctor. When the gunmen try to shoot their way out of getting captured by the police, a young girl is hit in the cross-fire. The doctor is the only one who can perform the surgery to save her life.

Kraven wants the doctor because he has an "experimental psychopromoter response procedure" that can increase Kraven's neural responses, "my speed, my reaction time a thousand-fold". Kraven also interestingly has heard of the Cat-People and wants to learn their secrets from Tigra.

Tigra is able to defeat Kraven...

...but the real conflict is internal, as Tigra has to restrain her animal instinct and not actually kill Kraven.

It's a decently written story, but it seems very wordy, even for Claremont, and of course the coincidence with the doctor is a bit much.

Kraven is supposed to be a relatively honorable guy, and not a killer of men. There's complaints in a later lettercol about this, and Claremont apologizes for the mistake.

I'll also mention, and it's not a problem with this issue specifically, that every time i write "Cat People" i snicker.

Quality Rating: C

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: Same deal as issue #3: Marvel Chillers #5 takes place during Avengers #147 (somehow; see the entry for that issue for details). So i've pushed issues #3 and #4 way prior to their publication dates. Yes i know that it actually pushes these issues between Marvel Chillers #1 & #2, but those are Modred the Mystic stories that don't have any effect on any other books.

References:

• A footnote directs us to Cat #1 - Cat #4, plus Giant-Size Creatures #1.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Robbins' artwork looks really clean here. There's probably a joke to be made about Vince Colletta erasing the messy parts but it's too easy...

I see no indication whatsoever that these gunmen are in any way connected with the Rat Pack seen in #3 and #5. Greer simply stumbled onto the hospital heist/kidnapping during the time she'd been trying to track them down.

Thanks, Matthew. Tigra says at the start of this issue that she was hunting the Rat-Pack, and when she runs into a different group of green-clad gunmen in this issue i guess i got confused. Updated it.

"Kraven is honorable" is really an invention of early 1980s stories; in the 60s and 70s, her was basically a macho thug willing to resort to skullduggery to avenge slights to his ego, hardly above stuff like brainwashing the Gibbon into attacking Spider-Man or rigging knockout gas and electro-zappers into his weird lion-vest. Heck, his partner in his very first appearance was the Chameleon, who's hardly an exemplar of honor and fair play.