prax150 's review for:

Amazing Spider-Man by Nick Spencer, Vol. 4: Hunted by Nick Spencer

4.0

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I had been sitting on the issues comprising the Hunted arc for a while now, I'd fallen a fair bit behind on ASM and wasn't really looking forward to catching up. This is a book where, no matter the author, it's always been hit or miss for me, and Spider-Man in general hasn't really had any storylines that have done for me since like the 90s. But I have to say I was pleasantly surprised with Hunted. There's a lot going on, but it's well-crafted by Nick Spencer and it makes good use of a lot of stuff surrounding Spider-Man. The story is about Kraven the Hunter hatching an elaborate plan basically so he can convince Spider-Man that he needs to kill him (due to some Marvel magic from when he got reincarnated). To show him that he's so dangerous that sometimes you just have no choice but to kill (a la Man of Steel). But while Spencer has Spider-Man do some questionable things, he never crosses that line, even facing an absurd amount of danger. The story has him stuck in Central Park with a bunch of his animal-themed rogues, under a force field erected by Arcade, who provides VR headsets and Kraven lookalike drones to a bunch of rich assholes. There are subplots with Black Cat, the Lizard, even Black Ant and Taskmasker get a nice little arc. It's really well-crafted and feels grand for something self-contained within half a dozen issues. The first 15 issues of Spencer's run feel like they were building to this, I hope it's not 15 more until we get something really interesting from ASM again.