Spider-Douchery #15--Kraven The Hunter

Oh, geez.  This guy.

I know a lot of people like him as some symbol of nature or man's quest to be the top of the literal food chain through pure primal skill and instinct.  To me, he's just some guy in his mom's yoga' pants and a vest he made out of a rug that was tossed int eh trash at a flea market.

Well, let's get this over with.

We start off with Spider-Man abusing his wall-crawling powers by spying on random people in New York and coincidentally finding some bad guys plotting to rob a bank.  I wonder how many people yelled at his to piss off or stop watching them piss before he got to these guys.

Jsut your firendly neighborhood peeping Tom

And so, on the first page, our hero hits a new low: he forgets how to count.  It takes him until he's opened the window and webbed up three guys to remember three and four are not the same.  It's not like the bad guys ran in separate directions; they all headed for the same door to escape.

The one who escapes is The Chameleon, who doesn't need to do much work to fool Spider-Man when he starts looking for the fourth guy he suddenly remembered.  He just changes the color of his jacket (but not his matching hat), and whips out a cane.  Maybe The Chameleon put more effort into disguising himself as a potted plant and that was most of what he could carry.

Spider-Man sees the one guy who looks exactly like the guy he's looking for, save for a different jacket and a cane and falls for the trick.  There's only ONE GUY at al out of the street, too, so it's not a game of Where's Waldo.  I'm now convinced whatever declared Peter Parker a 'genius' came out of a cereal box.

Even though he fooled Spider-Man, the Chameleon goes home to mope and pout. He's going to steal something, goddamnit, even if it's Peter's whining and bitching scene.  He complains that he was deported last time and he came all the way back to not only America, but New York, and he's surprised Spider-Man is even better at his job than before.  I guess Peter's genius works on a curve depending on the intelligence of the other characters in the story. He whines that no on can beat Spider-Man for a panel until he realizes there is someone--someone who just now retroactively exists and didn't before, because otherwise it would have made sense for The Chameleon to have called him the first time he had Spider-Man trouble.  Let's not involve common sense or a linear timeline in this.  This comic can't afford them.  It can barely afford background and doors for action scenes.  Heck, haven't you noticed the outside of every building looks exactly the same?

So he calls in Kraven the Hunter.  Who is Kraven the Hunter?  Why he's a famous...hunter...of...apparently who knows and who cares.  The answer would be Betty, who's too busy being mad at Liz for acknowledging Peter's existence.  What age is Betty here?  Either an adult is throwing a tantrum that a teenager likes another teenager or Jameson only hires minors so he doesn't have to pay them full wages.

When Jameson is the voice of reason, you might as well quit

Oh no!  It looks like a pointless drama scene!  It seems all the wild and dangerous animals Kraven was transporting (or he just prefers to travel on the same boats that exotic and very likely illegal animals are shipped on have all escaped all at once.  Jameson, standing a few feet away, is too in awe of Kraven as he tosses the animals back in their cages and containers without a care for their well-being to blame such shoddy work on Spider-Man.

I'll give Kraven this much credit: he takes up all the panels Spider-Man would normally have used up whining about Kraven hogging all the action.  Not allowed to even do that, Peter changes back into his civilian outfit, not even noticed by the catfight when he showed up as Spider-Man.  He continues to show how much of a 'genius' he is by saying out loud that he forgot to take any pictures while he was complaining.

Even Jameson's cigar is so at awe it turned into a pencil

...and now we get to why Kraven is above the Enforcers on my list of interesting Spider-Man villains.  He makes no sense.  How does pay for travel?  He announces he's going to hunt Spider-Man, how is that even legal?  Earlier someone said (off-panel, so I don't know who) that he can kill any animal with his bare hands.  What kind of license does he need for that?  Or for hunting Spider-Man?  Where does he keep it?  Why hunt Spider-Man?  Ironman has a robot suit, the Fantastic four are four people total all at once (okay, maybe three and one idiot), and, heck, why not hunt the Chameleon since he can disguise himself as anyone at any time?  Why not hunt The Hulk?  What if he wants to hunt Namor (who is stronger, better trained, less armor, and probably more likely to agree to a fight than Spider-Man)?   Why not just go hunt a kaiju or an elder god or Dracula (he'll be in the Marvelverse in a year or two)?  Why not hunt Dr. Doom?

Jameson of all people points out 'Hey, that's fucking illegal', but Kraven doesn't care.  The scene ends with Flash joining the catfight and neither Peter nor Jameson giving a damn about Betty's antics and not even noticing Liz is still around.

In the next two panels, Kraven gives his backstory, which explains none of the questions I've been asking.  He says he got super strength from stealing a potion from a witch doctor in Africa.  Do we need an explanation like this?  Why can't he just be like Frank Castle and highly trained in combat or something?

The only relevance to that scene is that The Chameleon, who has no fighting skills, warns Kraven not to underestimate Spider-Man just because he's one skinny guy in a brightly-colored costume (and, you know, has no robot suit or magic powers or such).  The next scene is Spider-Man fighting four regular thugs, all of whom thnk it's a great idea to jump Spider-Man one by one because he's only one guy.

It turns out these morons are hired to be, well, morons.  Kraven hired them just so he could study Spider-Man's moves in person.  Because how Spider-Man fights several guys who are rock stupid and can't coordinate themselves enough to agree on what kind of pizza to get will show Kraven how to a single expert at hunting animals.

After that fight, Spider-Man swings off, only to detect Kraven nearby. Instead of quitting as Spider-Man for a few days and letting Ironman and the Fantastic Four deal with criminals in New York for a few days until Kraven gives up--or politely asking for their help in telling him to piss off--Spider--Spider0Man decides to stick around and ask why Kraven's doing this.  Even he's annoyed at Kraven's half-assed answer: because he has nothing else to do.  Worse, after throwing one punch at Spider-Man, Kraven decides he's not even going to fight fair.  He stabs Spider-Man with a tranquilizer potion, but then gets bored and fucks off.

Why not web him up right now?  He's doing half the work for you.  Also, who peed on the sky?

Finally, Spider-Man gets a clue to go home and not bother with the guy.

The next day we get a rehash of the picture from when he got over the flu in Amazing Spider-Man #13.  The comic prolongs the catfight by adding the running gag of Aunt May trying to hook up Peter with Mary Jane Watson and him just missing the chance to meet her. Then we rehash Betty's bitchiness and  Kraven telling Jameson he doesn't listen to laws when it comes to hunting. Because if there's one thing I want to read when I pick up a Spider-Man comic, it's people acting like four-year-olds who were told they can't have ice cream.

Why bother being Sider-Man?  Your only villain is Kravena nd if you don't show up, he won't do anything.

Then Peter goes to school and everyone yells at him and maks fun of him because his hands start shaking, a side-effect of the potion still in his system.  Yes, how dare you have a medical condition that shows up without your control?  It's not like even shaking hands can injure or be a symptom of something serious.

Peter's day ends and the worst that happens is the newspaper's front page headline is the Kraven says Spider-Man is doomed.  Does Peter learn anything from a Kraven-less day without changing into Spider-Man?  Not in the slightest.

Why do so many villains' planm hinge on Spider-Man reading the Daily Bugle?

The next day (or that night, since the color of the sky never changes when the artist bothers to remember to add it) he's swinging around and doing exactly what Kraven wants: coming to him and doing a lot of work for Kraven.

He's even dumb enough to follow The Chameleon disguised at Kraven.  His 'genius' attention to details lets him get ambushed by the real Kraven before he can react to his spider-sense going off.  So far, as powers go, that's less useful than Sue Storm herself. Kraven throws a net over Spider-Man and stands there while, according to the narration of the comic, Spider-Man uses his great intellect to break part of it and escape through the hole.

Kraven manages to slap some manacles on Spider-Man's arm and foot--not a small feat since he was using loud jungle drums to distract Spider-Man enough to get close to him.

So Spider-Man decides 'fuck this stupid idea', and runs off...or tries to.  He more hobbles away really fast while the manacles try to attach due to magnets.  Still, he manages to avoid more of Kraven's nets, so the manacles aren't really that much of a problem, despite Spider-Man's whining.  The biggest problem is that hey have bells on them--at least according to Spider-Man, who didn't tell the artist.

After three pages, Spider-Man realizes he can shut up the bells by webbing them and their clappers in place with his webbing.  Somehow this makes it easy for him to sneak up on the Chameleon without him struggling wth the manacles.  Apparently, that's how magnets work in comics.

And then he, uh, I don't really know.  He just threatens the Chameleon and leaves to...um...bother Kraven.  He shines his crotch-light on Kraven who is suddenly afraid because Spider-Man's now following him.  I'd ask 'Why?', but unless you want another long list of questions, I'll just ask 'Why anything?' and move on.

Why did his clothes change to a dressing gown?

Kraven runs into a giant Spider-Web, and I wonder how he qualifies as a hunter if he couldn't see something ten feet tall, practically opaque, and a foot in front of him.  I know blind people can hunt, but they have guides with them who warn them about obvious things not to walk into.

What is the signal on exactly?  Did someone leave a random wall in a park, or is tha the literal edge of the comic?

Spider-Man steals the key to the manacles and lets the police bring in Kraven for...I have no idea and the Chameleon for being a moron.  Somehow, a guy dressed in bright red and blue manages to hide from the police and take pictures with a flash camera and remain unnoticed by the police.  He later turns in the photos as Peter Parker and Betty changes her mind about him for no reason other than the reset button needs to be pushed.  Betty asks if Peter will go out on a date, but he has to meet Mary Jane.  Instead of outright telling her, he just acts like an ass and whines as he goes home.  It turns out MJ canceled, so instead of telling Betty he's free, Peter calls Liz.  Liz got a clue and is out with Flash.  cue sad Tuba and The End.
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