Kraven's Last Hunt, Carnage debuts

Web of Spider-Man 32-33, Amazing Spider-Man 293-294, Spectacular Spider-Man 131-132

Kraven’s Last Hunt.  I bought the trade at a sale because it had a rep as a classic Spidey story.  Going into the re-read, I had no memory of how much I liked it the first time around.  

I don’t like it the second time around.  JM DeMatteis has a tendency to get really deep into his characters heads, and throw everything he digs up into his narration.  I prefer a more curated reading experience. I found it difficult to follow Kraven’s disjointed thought process, and didn’t care enough about either him or the story to spend the effort on deciphering it.  All of the animal totem mind games made no sense. Saying Kraven was insane doesn’t make it any more entertaining.

Vermin was equally uninteresting to me.  A general fail of a story.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? No

Would read again? No

Rating: Boring (Cutting)

Amazing Spider-Man 361-363

This box of comics is full of Major Feels issues.  The first appearance of Carnage lined up with the beginning of my comic collecting hobby.  Middle school me loved his visual design. The stark contrast between the black and red created a striking look.  The organic chaos of the writhing symbiote intrigued me far more than the stodgy one-track mindset of Venom (a fan favorite who never resonated with me).  

This was also my introduction to Mark Bagley.  He’s one of the definitive Spider-Man artists as far as I’m concerned.  It was a little weird seeing his original work on the adult Peter Parker and MJ after growing to accustomed to his Ultimate Spider-Man magnum opus.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? No

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Major Feels

Marvel Box 7 completed!

Box Summary:

Time spent reading: 25 hours, 59 minutes

Issues read: 216

Issues cut: 55

Highlights (Good or better): Secret Warriors 24, She-Hulk 1-4, Tangled Web 4, 11, 21, Amazing Spider-Man 96-98, 121-122

Project Summary:

Time spent reading: 174 hours, 43 minutes

Issues read: 1380

Issues cut: 189

This box had the most number of cut issues so far.  Big chunks of Spider-Girl, She-Hulk, and Sentinel weren’t good enough to keep.