Amazing Spider-Man Vol 5 #17/Lgy 818 Review: The Bogenrieder Perspective

The hunt begins.

Amazing Spider-Man (2018) #17/ Lgy #818

“Hunted, Pt 1”

Writer: Nick Spencer

Pencils: Humberto Ramos

Inks: Victor Olazaba

Colors: Edgar Delgado

Editor: Nick Lowe and Kathleen Wisneski

EiC: C.B. Cebulski

Plot:

Kraven is our spirit animal these days; he walks around his house naked and pontificates about life and death. (He’s just like me!) On the flip side, a fever-ridden Peter is running around looking for Felicia and Billy, only to come to a dead end when green gas pumps into the room, along with Kraven87. Not only is his illness hampering his ability to fight back, but the gas causes him to hallucinate MJ dying, and Kraven87 overpowers him.

Putting on a different suit than his birthday one, Kraven goes to visit Black Cat and Lizard Boy, telling them about his master plan. Eventually, he brings all the animal-themed villains and Spider-Man to Central Park, and activates the energy shield, trapping everything inside. Peter awakens in the black suit and, after a brief scuffle with Scorpion, they all run away from a bunch of Kraven-themed robots with assault rifles. (They even have his moustache!)

Thoughts:

First off, I have to give Nick Spencer some due props for the amount of entheusiasm he’s dumped into this project; not only did he request extra issues to dedicate to side characters who, normally, people wouldn’t care about, (Sure, it’s not Stegron, the greatest character of all time, but it’ll do.) but he encouraged everybody to reread Kraven’s Last Hunt before going into this story. (Which definitely helps highlights some of the parallels between that story and this one.) That makes it clear that he really cares about this story and really wants it to be a bookend to Last Hunt.

For starters, this isn’t exactly a complete ripoff. There are certain elements that border on full-on copying the storyline in the lead-in, (Kraven going around his house lamenting about death, Peter lamenting the death of Ned Leeds, clone or not) but there’s enough contextual difference to make those scenes come off more as homages and understanding of why they work as opposed to just flat-out stealing them. I think the important thing is that Spencer understands the symbolism of some of the physical parallels of that story (The black suit is the most important, knowing that it’s the suit that Peter “died” in at Kraven’s hand (And Mark asked me to explain why Kraven87 stripped Peter and changed his costume, but I’m guessing it’s just that Kraven87 was in the jungle for a good majority of his life; stuff like that would be common for him and the Flour Power brigade.)) and going forwards, I expect that the homages will be less direct and more abstract.

For once, I was okay with Peter losing a fight. He was (rightfully) distracted by hallucinogenic gas, and on top of that, he has the fever carrying over from ASM #16. To be honest, the fact that he was even swinging at Kraven was astonishing and a testament to his willpower.

Art-wise, I think Humberto Ramos also understands the parallels that Spencer is making in regards to what is one of the most iconic and well-written (Possibly the best-written) Spider-Man story ever told. While he’s not on the same level as Mike Zeck, he understands the type of imagery that made Last Hunt so memorable, down to the thick shading and the use of heavy, geometric lines. While I’m not too happy that Ryan Ottley got passed over for Ramos, and some weird panels where Ramos overlooks anatomy in favor of things looking cool really stick out, I still think was arguably one of the good choices that Spencer made for this story in particular.

On a technical level, there’s not as much dialogue as there usually is in a Spencer book. There’s an entire page dedicated to just making it all black (I think it was cheap to waste that much useful page space to what is essentially a blank page. It’s a problem that I think has plagued every issue of Rosenberg’s Uncanny X-Men run as well.) But the silent pages showing everything being set up are effectively used, showing the dreary atmosphere and how screwed over everybody is. As for the vision? It’s not unlike Spencer to pull a fast one on us and have it mean something different, but I have a theory on the Crawlspace Discord about that, so if you want me to elaborate it here… too bad.

Overall? I don’t remember the last time the stakes were this genuinely high for the book. Great writing, solid art, and a feeling of hype I haven’t felt since I gained critical perspective. A great way to kick off the year’s big Spidey story.

Braka-brakas, unite!

Final Grade: A