Spider-Man: Grim Hunt

Comic Info

Amazing Spider-Man (2) #636 Variant

Reprints Amazing Spider-Man (2) #634-637, Amazing Spider-Man:  Extra! #3, and Web of Spider-Man (2) #7 (May 2009-September 2010).  Kraven the Hunter took Spider-Man to his darkest moment.  When he defeated and buried Spider-Man alive, Kraven himself was pushed to the edge and ended his own life.  Now, Kraven’s children and his wife intend to bring Kraven back from the dead and start the Grim Hunt.  Spider-Man has been pushed to the limits by his enemies and now he is primed for the hunt.  It is going to take everyone in Spider-Man’s “family” to stop Kraven, and not everyone will survive!

Written by Joe Kelly with additional stories by Fred Van Lente, Phil Jimenez, J.M. DeMatteis, and Zeb Wells, Spider-Man:  The Grim Hunt is a Marvel Comics superhero collection.  Following Spider-Man:  The Gauntlet—Volume 5:  Lizard, the collection features art by Michael Lark, Phillipe Briones, Phil Jimenez, Marco Checchetto, Stefano Gaudiano, and Max Fiumara.  In addition to Amazing Spider-Man (2) #634-637 (August 2010-September 2010), the collection features additional stories form Amazing Spider-Man:  Extra! #3 (May 2009) and Web of Spider-Man (2) #7 (June 2010).

I hadn’t read any of The Gauntlet when I read Spider-Man:  The Grim Hunt.  While it doesn’t feel like it was necessarily, it might have helped the story.  Kraven the Hunter has never been my favorite character and Spider-Man:  The Grim Hunt didn’t change my opinion.

Amazing Spider-Man (2) #637

I’ve had this experience before with Joe Kelly.  I like a lot of his ideas, but I’m not a huge fan of his execution.  The Grim Hunt throws a lot at you in a quick period of time and ties into the J. Michael Straczynski run.  It unceremoniously dispatches Mattie Franklin and sets up the poorly used Julia Carpenter as the new Madame Web.  There is too much going on, and the characters deserve better…even Kraven’s clan.

The story also suffers from Marvel’s printing style at the time.  Amazing Spider-Man was on a rapid-fire twice a month schedule and the issues also feel a bit weighty in comparison with other titles.  Marvel put the back-up story of Kaine vs. Kraven as a four issue story in the back of each issue and the story kind of sets up Kraven’s Last Hunt.  I wish that this had been told a different way and the choppy nature of writing it, had me just going back and rereading it as a whole after I read The Grim Hunt.  It probably would have been better served as a stand-alone one-shot instead of a back-up story.

Spider-Man:  The Grim Hunt feels like a big moment put in a little, insignificant package.  The lead up to the story and the ramifications of the story were rather big, but it reads like any other Spider-Man story.  Marvel followed the big storyline with the “One Day More” explainer series “One Moment in Time” and then “Origin of the Species” before kicking Spider-Man into high gear again with “Big Time”.  Spider-Man:  The Grim Hunt is a necessary read to understand what is happening in Big Time, but don’t expect to be wowed.  Spider-Man:  The Grim Hunt is followed by Spider-Man:  One Moment in Time.

Related Links:

Amazing Spider-Man:  Kraven’s Last Hunt