Trivia / Kraven's Last Hunt

---

• Divorced Installment: The comic was based on a storyline involving Wonder Man and the Grim Reaper that J. M. DeMatteis submitted to Marvel and was rejected. He then reworked it into a Batman vs. The Joker project that got nixed because The Killing Joke was already in production. Next DeMatteis developed the "return from the grave" story into one about Batman and Hugo Strange, but that also was rejected by DC. Finally he reworked and expanded the story for Marvel into the epic we know today.
• Inspiration for the Work: According to Word of God, the reason he chose Kraven the Hunter as the villain was because he was Russian which he read in a Marvel handbook, and as such allowed him to find a way to tap into the ideas of Fyodor Dostoevsky in a superhero comic:
  "Please understand that I had no interest whatsoever in Kraven. In fact, I always thought he was one of the most generic, uninteresting villains in the Spider-Man gallery... But buried in this Marvel Universe entry was one intriguing fact: Kraven — was Russian. Why should that excite me so? One word: Dostoyevsky. When I read Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov in high school, they seeped in through my brain, wormed their way down into my nervous system... and ripped me to shreds. No other novelist has ever explored the staggering duality of existence, illuminated the mystical heights and the despicable depths of the human heart, with the brilliance of Dostoyevsky. The Russian soul, as exposed in his novels, was really the Universal Soul. It was my soul.
• Throw It In!: As J. M. DeMatteis pointed out, the original story (whose outline he initially planned for a number of characters at DC and other places) was planned without Mary Jane, leaving alone a married Spider-Man. However once the editorial department agreed to it and asked writers to work it into the stories, DeMatteis approved the addition and he pointed out that it gave the story the emotional center he was searching for.

---