Marvel Chillers #4
Tigra the Were-Woman (yes, fellow comic geeks, I know that "were-woman" actually means “man-woman”) battles with Kraven the Hunter in her fourth issue. The pairing just makes sense. This is early days yet for the Tigra character, and a good match-up with a thematically appropriate villain of comparable power can do a lot to establish them as a credible lead. As Kraven himself points out, he has already fought Spider-Man, Daredevil, and Ka-Zar. For a while there, he certainly got around as a villain.
Claremont is the writer, which means the story is full of his patented “Claremont-isms”. People might mock them now, but those exposition-loaded conversations and purple prose-filled captions made him one of the most popular writers at Marvel for decades. Vinnie Colletta is on the art and, while not setting anything on fire visually, it is solid art with some good fight scenes and a few moody touches here and there.
Significant to this issue is an injured bystander, which you would expect more of in, say, a Hulk comic, what with all the attendant property damage. Here, specifically, it is a young girl caught in the crossfire between the police and Kraven’s hired thugs. Shot in the neck, she will be paralyzed for life unless Tigra frees the neurosurgeon Kraven kidnapped for reasons of his own.
The henchmen get a little more characterization than the usual hired goons. They don't get any more brains, just some characterization. After their employer abandons them to the police, a few of them escape and plot to get revenge on Kraven. Let’s just say it goes badly for the ex-goons.
Kraven has to fall back on his little gadgets to get an edge on his feline opponent (stun beams, sonic disruptors, and an electrified fence), but the advantage is only temporary. Tigra has him at her mercy by the time things are all over. In a moral victory, she doesn't give in to her new animal instincts and resists killing the villain. In a common-sense defeat, she leaves Kraven for the regular cops to take in. He probably escaped before they even got the cuffs on him.
Comments