So a long, long time ago, before I'd even heard of The Dark Knight Returns, when my nascent consciousness was only just becoming aware of the world of imagination known as comic books, there was a book called Kraven's Last Hunt.
Not that I read the whole thing. I bought one issue. One issue. That was the extent of my comic collection. It wasn't even the first issue of the miniseries - it was the fourth. I read it over and over, never knowing how the story began or ended.
And this was the cover:
Can you imagine? That's a pretty intense cover for an eight-year-old. The issue was entitled "Resurrection," and it was written by a man named J. M. DeMatteis.
This was not your normal comic book. There were no battle sequences. No action. No villain. In fact, the story was over: Peter Parker was already dead. The whole issue was about him struggling with his own mind, to awaken from a coma induced by Kraven the Hunter.
If you think the cover was intense, take a look at this sequence:
Peter is talking to his own totem: the Spider. It is the totem with which he struggles, and he must break through as a man - not a spider - if he is to return from the dead to his wife, Mary Jane.
DeMatteis signature is deep psychological insight - note the schizophrenia in Parker's voices in the panel above. It's hard to imagine a panel like this being drawn without Frank Miller's Bat-Totem, or a story like this being published without The Dark Knight Returns.
