By Jim Beard
You've glimpsed amazing new Spidey villains sporting amazing new names in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN over the first few months of "Brand New Day," but now here comes a new villain with an old name!
The
Spider-Man team proudly presents the new Kraven, a beautiful baddie who spells more than trouble for everyone's favorite Webslinger beginning in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #565, due July 9.
That's right, we said beautiful. This Kraven represents the female of the species, and she strikes a bit too close to home for Peter Parker's comfort level.
"She's figured out where Spider-Man lives," reveals writer Marc Guggenheim. "So you know she's gonna do some damage. She's also very young and very motivated.
"There's never been a Spidey villain like her, which isn't easy to say after so many decades of stories!"
Guggenheim, a member of the Spider-Man "Braintrust," partners with superstar artist Phil Jimenez, himself no stranger to AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, to introduce this new, deadlier urban hunter. Just don't call her Kravenette; she's her own person according to Guggenheim.
"Because she's younger, she's much more impulse," he explains, comparing her to the first Kraven. "No less skilled or deadly, but certainly a lot more prone to taking risks and shooting from the hip.
"Like the original, she thinks strategically, like a hunter."
Introduced in 1964's AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #15, Kraven the Hunter gave Spider-Man jungles full of nasty surprises. The character killed himself after he perceived no further life challenges existed, in 1987's landmark story, "Kraven's Last Hunt."
It remains unclear what, if any, connection the new villainess has with the original Kraven, other than the moniker. Regardless, Spider-Man's reaction to her is no less concerned.
"It'll be like someone faced with an enemy whose only goal is to torture him in the most painful him in the most painful, prolonged way possible," notes Guggenheim. "Like I said, Spidey's never had a teenage girl come after him with such a dark, sinister vengeance before.
"It's gonna be very interesting."
Jimenez's art graced AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #552-554 but he had yet to team-up with Guggenheim on the title. The fan-favorite artist wowed his writer immediately with his vision for the story arc.
"I thought, 'Wow, now I know why I've always wanted to work with Phil Jimenez,'" reports Guggenheim. "Not that I didn't know before, of course, but Phil's work on this arc has been so jaw-dropping amazing that it just confirms all my instincts in wanting to work with him.
"He brings so much to the table. The whole arc has this really cinematic quality to it. Phil packs so much in, I think people will be amazed how much story we tell over three issues."
Join Guggenheim, Jimenez, Spider-Man, and the all-new, all-amazing Kraven in the pages of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #565, on sale July 9!
