
I always thought he was one of the stupidest Spider-Man villains ever, but suddenly I had this whole new take on the character. This was a character I had never had any interest in whatsoever. I thought about Kraven and the forces that had driven him to be who and what he was. For me, a total Dostoyevsky fanatic, the idea that Kraven was Russian and had the same tortured, Russian soul that the great Dostoyevsky characters had, unlocked this door in my head and suddenly I had a new understanding of this character. To this day, I don't know if this was something that was established in continuity, or if whoever was writing the Handbook entry made it up, but they mentioned that Kraven was Russian. Writer DeMatteis recounted:Īs I was getting ready to work on the story, I was sitting in my office and looking through a Marvel Universe Handbook and came across the entry for Kraven the Hunter. Although generally considered to be the definitive Kraven the Hunter story, the story originally had a completely different character in Kraven's role. DeMatteis, Mike Zeck, and Bob McLeod, " Kraven's Last Hunt". He is killed off in the acclaimed 1987 storyline by J. Though he would occasionally appear in other characters' titles, he was most frequently used as a Spider-Man foe. The character first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man issue #15 (August 1964), and was created by writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko. Aaron Taylor-Johnson will portray Kraven in the Sony's Spider-Man Universe film Kraven the Hunter (2023).
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The character has appeared in numerous Spider-Man media adaptations over the years including animated series and video games. In 2009, Kraven was ranked as IGN's 53rd-greatest comic book villain of all time.

The character is widely regarded as one of Spider-Man's most formidable enemies, and has gained considerable attention from storylines such as 1987's " Fearful Symmetry: Kraven's Last Hunt," 2010's " Grim Hunt", 2015–2019's " The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl's Friend Kraven", and 2019's " Hunted".

Because of this, Kraven has sometimes been depicted as an antihero and has teamed up with other heroes, including Spider-Man, the Avengers of 1959, and Squirrel Girl, in The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (2015–2019). Though he is often overconfident in his own abilities, which he likes to boast about, he possesses a great sense of honor, and treats his adversaries as equals until proven otherwise. Kraven is typically portrayed as a renowned big-game hunter whose goal in life is to beat Spider-Man to prove himself as the world's greatest hunter. In Kraven's first appearance, he refers to Spider-Man as "the most dangerous game", a direct reference to the 1924 short story of the same name, in which General Zaroff, a Russian big game hunter (and a primary inspiration for the character), hunts people as sport. He is the half-brother of the Chameleon and one of the founding members of the Sinister Six. Kraven has also come into conflict with other heroes, such as Black Panther and Tigra. Debuting in The Amazing Spider-Man issue #15 (August 1964) as an adversary to the superhero Spider-Man, he has since endured as one of the web-slinger's most formidable foes, and is part of the collective of adversaries that make up Spider-Man's rogues' gallery. Kraven the Hunter ( Sergei Dimitri Symostivych Kravinoff Russian: Сергей Кравинов) is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics.

