Amazing Spider-Man by Nick Spencer vol. 4: Hunted

THE HUNT IS ON!  Kraven the Hunter has been lurking around the margins of “Amazing Spider-Man” since the start of latest relaunch, having Taskmaster and Black Ant gather animal-themed supervillains, and now we find out why.  The story Kraven gives us is that he believes it’s time for them to truly learn what it means to embody the creature whose name they’ve taken. To that end he’s also rounded up a bunch of one-percenters, given them some heavily armed android avatars, and set everyone loose inside a Central Park that’s been shielded from outside intervention.  Not from Spider-Man, though. No, Kraven wants the Spider in the thick of all this so that he can give the Hunter what he’s really wanted after all these years.

As the climax to what Spencer has been building up over these past three volumes, “Hunted” is… alright.  It’s not the series-ending faceplant that “Superman:  Black Dawn” was to me, but it still feels like a middle-of-the-road event.  That’s mainly down to the fact that many of the story’s twists and surprises feel expected more than anything else.  I’ll admit that some of them do feel earned by the end of things — like the stuff involving the Lizard and his son — and Spencer writes everything with all the energy and wit he can muster.  It’s just not quite enough to sustain eight issues of the main event and four tie-in issues. I mean, we REALLY didn’t need a whole issue about the sad, lonely death of the Gibbon. The man who gave us “The Superior Foes of Spider-Man” should’ve been able to turn something like that into the pitch-black comedy it was meant to be.

The many artists involved in this volume also do their best to turn “Hunted” into the high-octane action spectacle it wants to be.  That’s actually a fairly easy task for its main artists, Humberto Ramos and Gerardo Sandoval, whose exaggerated and lively styles are perfect for a story where animal-themed supervillains are being hunted by robots.  Ryan Ottley also shows up (with Alberto Albuquerque for a bit) to give some style to the introduction and the reshuffling of the status quo that closes out the volume. Iban Coello, Ken Lashley, Chris Bachalo, and Cory Smith also go above-and-beyond for their tie-in issues, giving these mostly filler stories better art than they arguably deserve.  All this leads me to say that “Hunted” isn’t a bad story overall, just one that could’ve benefitted from some judicious editing (and a lower price point than the sticker-shock inducing $40 this twelve-issue comes with).