On the post-Doomsday JLA

It may surprise you that my favorite superhero is actually a DC character.  Or at least he was – he took a bullet to the head about 7 years ago and thanks to the New 52 DCU (which has apparently retconned it’s 2.99 line drawing) he may not have even existed.  Perhaps you’ve met him.

I first met my hero in one of his least glamorous moments when I, like every other comic fan in 1992, read the Death of Superman.  Blue Beetle’s role in that story can be summed up by:

But Beetle wasn’t the only casualty of the JLA’s tie-in to Doomsday.  But to handle that mess, I guess we should start at the beginning of the post-Crisis JLA and work our way up.

Crossover Madness

This month’s featured crossover is “Kraven’s Last Hunt.”  This story appeared in the pages of Web of Spider-man, Amazing Spider-man, and Spectacular Spider-man.  I’m not sure why it didn’t appear in an issue of Stupendous Spider-man.  Wait, I might be making that last title up.  Although, wouldn’t it be a great title for a Spider-man book?  But I digress.  Below is brief recap of the story, and some thoughts on it.

Kraven’s Last Hunt

Issues:  Web of Spider-man #31-32, Amazing Spider-man #293-294, Spectacular Spider-man #131-132

Writer:  J. M. DeMatteis

Artist:  Mike Zeck

This is a story about death.  Part of it is about dying having known that you have lived a life with no regrets and are dying with honor.  Part of it is about being afraid dying, and what will happen to those you leave behind.  And part of the story is about being afraid that someone close to you may die, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Kraven the hunter knows that he is nearing the end of his life, but he feels like he has to defeat Spider-man before he goes.  He must do this because Spider-man is the one creature that he has not been able to conquer.  Defeating Spider-man will bring honor to not only him, but his family name.  Honor that was lost when his family was forced to leave Russia with the rise of Communism.  Peter Parker is thinking back on how many people that have been in his life that have passed away.  He wonders who will be next:  Aunt May, Mary Jane, or even himself.  Mary Jane fears that one day her new husband Peter Parker won’t return home from a night of being Spider-man.  Also appearing in this story is a creature named Vermin.  He doesn’t like the world above the sewers, but really he’s in this story to serve as a way for Kraven to prove himself.  More on that later.

New Comic Day hangover

Big week for the Marvel U as the Real Big Event closes up.  Elsewhere, new DC runs launch and the X-Men plow on through Second Coming.  Here’s what’s on this week’s list:

Booster Gold #32 in which way too much dialogue sets off not a whole lot of story.

Justice League: Generation Lost #1 in which four of the JLI reunite for a Real Big Story.

Astonishing X-Men: Xenogenesis #1 in which the X-Men look weird.

New Avengers Finale in which New Avengers ends before a new New Avengers launches.

New Mutants #13 in which Hope meets the rest of the class.

Siege #4 in which a universal reset button is pressed.

I’ll be covering the Siege event as a whole in a separate post, so we’ll leave that one alone for now.  As for the other five, my thoughts (with SPOILERS included) will follow after the jump.  So jump already.