The Grim Hunt by: Joe Kelly (writer), Michael Lark, Marco Checchetto, Stefano Gaudiano, Matt Southworth & Brian Thies (art), Matt Hollingsworth (colors) and Joe Caramanga (letters)
Hunting the Hunter by: J.M. Dematteis (writer), Max Fiumara (art), Fabio D’Auria (colors) & Joe Caramanga (letters)
Spider Sundays by Stan Lee & Marcos Martin
The Story: Spider-Man becomes the hunter! Enraged by the death of Kaine and others from the Spider-family, our webslinger goes after the Kravinoffs with a vengeance (or as much vengeance as Marvel editors will let him have).
What’s Good: This is a mostly satisfactory conclusion to the much anticipated Grim Hunt story line. I have a number of quibbles with this issue, but I don’t want their sheer volume to make people think I didn’t like the issue. It is more that this could have been epic and it just wasn’t.
One thing that I loved in this issue was getting to see Spider-Man kick ass. We’re so used to seeing him getting beat up and having weird relationships with his roommate, that it’s easy to forget that when Spidey really applies himself, he is pretty much hell on wheels. Parts of this issue almost had the feel of a Wolverine comic (without the claws) as Spidey ambushes the Kravinoffs from the shadows while wearing the black suit.
Oh yes… He is back in the black suit. Partly that is out of necessity since we know that Kaine stripped him naked (which causes a weird mental image, now that I think of it), but part of it was to emphasize that Spidey “is out for blood”. Frankly, the way this story arc had been unafraid to kill people, I thought we might see something interesting so seeing the black costume built my anticipation for a dramatic ending.
You also really get your money’s worth with this comic. It should almost be priced by the pound. The main story is 35 pages long and there are 12 pages of back-up material. This book actually has some heft to it although I was tired enough by the time I read the main story that I only skimmed the back-ups.
What’s Not So Good: I was pretty disappointed in how this issue punked-out on a few issues. After all the buildup of how ANGRY Spidey was and Madame Web’s prattling out about how “the Spider is angry”, to see him not stab Kraven at the end because Spidey/Peter represents all that is good in heroes was a complete bummer. That’s when it might have been cool to say, “You’re right, and that’s why I called Logan.” and we’d just see Logan drop into the scene, hear a “SNIKT” and be done with it.
The whole “web of life” story also just wasn’t really working for me. Spider-Man is really kind of a street-level character who happens to moonlight with the Avengers, so I don’t like that they’re tossing this whole web of spiders nonsense into the book. Can’t he just be a dude who got bit by a radioactive spider?
I have a hard time judging the art on ASM. On one hand, the art is kinda screwed up in this issue which is expected when you have 5 artists working on a book. On the other hand, I hold ASM to a different standard because of the fact that it ships so often. Much like I don’t expect CNN.com to have writing as good as Rolling Stone, but this was still kind of a mess. I wish they’d just identify a few artists who can work fast (Chris Samnee likes to talk about how fast he is) and let them do this book instead of having really good artists who clearly get behind in their work by the 3rd issue of a story arc.
My final quibble with the Grim Hunt is that it’s already over and that it wasn’t epic. The web-heads had a real chance to do a really memorable story, but they blew it. It is still a nice story, but for all the build up and with the excellence of the first two issues I hoped for more.
And…..could they really not wait to bring Kaine back? Dude is crawling back out of his grave by the end of the issue. Sheesh… and they wonder why we are cynical about character deaths. I thought killing him was a great way to push off a dumb character.
Conclusion: Good, but it could have been much better.
Grade: C+
– Dean Stell
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