I wonder if, when all is said and done, the theme of this Scarlet Spider series is going to be ‘failure’. I don’t mean that to be rude, because I’m a huge Scarlet Spider fan and I’ve really enjoyed this comic. But surely everybody going in had to know it probably wouldn’t last. There just isn’t a big enough fan base for the character to warrant several years of publication. New comics these days are lucky to last two years, and I’m grateful that we made it all the way into the 20s. But writer Christopher Yost had to have known his run would have an ending, and I wonder if he planned from the beginning on having Kaine fail as a superhero.

Scarlet Spider #23

It would be a bold stance on a series like this. Not everybody is destined to be the world’s greatest hero, and maybe a sadsack like Kaine just couldn’t cut it. If his final battle with Kraven is any indication, maybe he just doesn’t have what it takes.

Comic Rating: 7/10 – Good.

The final battle between Kaine and Kraven is upon us, and it lives up to almost all expectations. Yost has been building this one for awhile, and I’m excited to see Kaine throw down with an established Marvel super-villain. He may be a second-stringer like Kraven, but at least he’s got the chops to be devastating. And Yost makes the stakes pretty damn high, with all of Kaine’s friends on the chopping block. But for all the fun of this final confrontation, I don’t think Yost went far enough. In the end, Scarlet Spider is still just a second-stringer itself, and it’s so close to cancellation that it just doesn’t matter. So Yost just couldn’t deliver as deeply tragic or as powerful an issue as I would have liked.

I would have hoped that a book like Scarlet Spider wouldn’t have the constraints of a normal Spider-Man comic. Kaine is hardly an important, long-lasting character. His supporting cast will probably never be seen again. The villains he faces aren’t very important. I feel Yost should have had a lot more freedom to really push the envelope. Instead, we get a comic where that seems like it might be the case, but where Yost has to pull back at the last second.

What a shame. But it’s an even bigger shame that this comic is coming to an end soon.

So the stage is set for the final battle. Kraven demands that Kaine fight him to the death, with the lives of Kaine’s friends hanging in the balance.

Give baby his bottle

What choice does Kaine have but to try and take Kraven down? The villain explains that since Kaine was the one involved in his resurrection, and not the pure Spider-Man, that Kraven has come back all wrong, so it stands to reason that Kaine is the only one who can kill him. Kaine doesn’t particularly want to kill Kraven, but he is worried about his friends.

So impatient

The two continue to battle back and forth. Kraven taunts him out loud, while Kaine’s inner monologue runs the gamut of concerns. When Kraven’s daughter, Ana, rises and asks to have the honor of killing her father, Kraven smacks her away. Only Kaine can do it, as far as Kraven is concerned, since Kaine is the one who put him in this hell. He continues to smack Kaine around, until Kaine says that if this is hell for Kraven, then why would Kaine want to kill him to help him escape it? Kraven just laughs and orders his daughter to kill one of Kaine’s friends.

So she does.

It’s only a flesh wound…kind of

I was not expecting that. Personally, before I turned the page, I thought Aracely was going to come into her powers and save Dr. Donald at the last second. But nope, he gets gutted, and everybody has to watch. It’s pretty horrifying, and artist David Baldeon does a fantastic job with the faces. They’re a little cartoony, but they’re devastatingly horrific.

But as we’ll see eventually, this isn’t as bad as it looks.

Kraven goes back to smacking Scarlet Spider around some more before finally telling his daughter to just kill them all. That finally gets Kaine to act.

Five Finger Palm Exploding Heart Technique

So Kaine kills Kraven, but again…just wait.

Anyway, Kaine rushes to Donald’s aid, but he’s pretty helpless to do anything. Wally demands to be cut down, his face awash in anger and tears. Kaine webs up Donald’s gut wound while the others attend to him. Kaine slashes Ana into submission, then decides to be a hero and revives Kaine by punching his chest a whole lot. I don’t really think that’s how that sort of thing works, but such is the power of thumping one’s chest in fiction. Kaine brings Kraven back to life to prove to himself that he’s a hero.

And so Kraven and his daughter make their escape while Kaine worries about his friend Donald.

Those are pretty violent tears

At the hospital, Donald is still alive, though the doctor tells Kaine and Annabelle that he’s touch-and-go through the surgeries. They don’t know if he’ll survive the night – but the fact that he’s alive right now might be a pretty strong indication of what’s going to happen. Kaine and Annabelle share a hug in their grief, and they wonder where Wally went.

Police Officer Wally Layton went back to the police station to use the department’s law enforcement computer network to look up ‘Kaine’, uncovering our hero’s murderous, super-villain past!

And his silly, 90s-esque long hair

So it looks like the final few issues might be about Kaine facing his friends, who now know what a monster he used to be. That sounds like a much more entertaining finale than some random super-villain fight. Kaine has to confront everything he’s accomplished or hasn’t accomplished in Houston so far. I’m hoping for a really good wrap-up, and in the end, this will have been an interesting little comic.

A bit player from the Spider-Man universe gets a couple dozen issues to have adventures in Houston, with a small little supporting cast and his own handful of villains. The larger Marvel Universe will go on, Kaine himself will go on, but this was just a small little window into a couple of lives in the City of Houston. I think it’s a neat perspective when you think about it. In the middle of all this Infinity nonsense and the X-Men doing their thing and Superior Spider-Men, there were a few weeks in Houston when a lonely soul named Kaine had a few misadventures. If he’d never shown up at all, would anybody have been able to tell the difference? Or even care all that much? In all of our lives, there are always millions of people around us living their own millions of lives completely separate from our own. It’s just fun to know the same thing happens in the Marvel Universe.

But while this was a fine issue, with a great fight between Kaine and Kraven, I’m a little disappointed that Yost couldn’t have pushed the story harder. Who cares if Donald Meland survives? He’s a minor supporting character in a minor comic book. Why not kill him for real and really ratchet home the idea that Kaine simply failed as a superhero? His actions put innocent people in jeopardy and now they have to pay the price. And why not have Kaine kill Kraven? It was foolish to resurrect Kraven in the first place, considering how iconic his death was back in the day. It’s not like Kraven is a major player in any other comic books. So why not give Kaine this moment and have him really put Kraven down, then we can all just forget he was ever needlessly resurrected.

But nope. Yost pulls back on both Donald’s death and Kraven’s death. I’m afraid that Scarlet Spider might limp to its conclusion, but I really hope it goes out with style and class.