Creation Point (1987)

(The Story Behind The Hunt)

J.M. Matteis

Confession: I didn’t write Kraven’s Last Hunt. Well, at least not in the way you think. Writers like to believe their in control of their material but that’s just a comforting lie. They move, they think, they breathe, maybe not in the way flesh and blood humans do, but in some unfathomable realm, these creatures we call stories are very much in control. Some of these Imaginal Worlds choose to emerge fully formed in a white heat of creation energy. Others like the Kraven Saga, well.. they like to take their time.

It was a long road from the first glimmer of inspiration somewhere around 1984 or ’85 to the final published work. If it had been up to me and thank goodness it wasn’t, the original idea would have seen print as, of all things a Wonder Man Mini-Series. But the story knew better. I knew that it needed time to brew in my unconscious and find the proper form.

Tom DeFalco then Marvel’s Editor agreed. When I pitched him the idea he promptly rejected it. My next stop some months later was DC Comics where I pitched what I thought was an incredible idea to Editor Len Wein. Len had another Batman/Joker story on his desk. Something called The Killing Joke by a new British writer named Alan Moore,  (whatever happened to him anyway?) and thought that the Joker elements in my story overlapped certain elements in Alan’s. Rejection. Again. I was disappointed but I suspect the story was quite pleased with these events. It knew the timing wasn’t right, knew what elements it needed for it’s emergence. And so it waited patiently while I rewrote it again.

As a Spider-Man story? No. As yet another Batman story. By this time Len Wein had gone freelance and Denny O’Neil had replaced him as Batman editor. Guess what? Denny bounced it. So now I’ve had this idea rejected three times by three of the best Editors in the business. Maybe I thought, I’m delusional. Maybe I should just give up, and move on. But the story wouldn’t let me.

I was frustrated to say the least by all the doors slamming in my face but this seed of an idea well, by this time it had pushed up through the soil and was sprouting branches and leaves. Unfolding at it’s own pace. In it’s own time. I knew, even if I clearly didn’t, that it would soon find the form and most importantly the characters it had been seeking all along. Autumn 1986, I was visiting the Marvel office one day when Jim Owsley, Editor of the Spider-Man line, and Tom DeFalco invited me out to lunch. They wanted me to pick up the writing duties on Spectacular Spider-Man but I was reluctant to commit to another monthly book. Owsley and DeFalco were insistent. I weakened. They pushed harder. I agreed.

And by the time I got home I realized what a stroke of good fortune this was: Peter Parker; recently married to Mary Jane, is perhaps the most emotionally and psychologically authentic protagonist in any Super-Hero Universe. Underneath that mask he’s as confused, flawed, and touchingly human as the people who read and write about him- the quintessential Everyman. And that Everyman’s love for his new wife, his vulnerabilities, and the new life they were building together, was the emotional fuel that ignited the story. And that’s how Kraven’s Last Hunt was born.

Now here’s the strangest part: In the years that had passed from the time I pitched the original Wonder Man idea, my personal life had gone to hell in the proverbial handbasket. I’ll spare you the sordid details: Let’s just say I was in a period of my life where each day was a Herculean struggle. I felt lost, desperate, and shattered. In short, it was a miserable time to be me, but the perfect time to write the story. Had I created a version of Last Hunt a few years before, or a few years after (when my life had healed itself in miraculous ways) it wouldn’t have been the same. My own personal struggles, mirrored in the struggles of our three main characters, were, I think, what gave the writing such an urgency and emotional honesty. (I don’t know what inspired Zeck’s brilliant work, but I hope wasn’t anything as harrowing.)

So tell me: who, exactly is in charge here? Who really wrote this story? I thought it was me, but all along there was something growing, evolving, emerging in it’s own time, when the creative conditions were absolutely perfect. Oh I’ll cash the checks. I’ll even accept praise, but in my heart, I know there’s something bigger out there, working it’s magic through me and through all of us who call ourselves writers. Stories have lives of their own. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.