Meet the Kravinoffs! The Family of Kraven the Hunter

Spider-Man has become the HUNTED! Time to meet the family!

Kraven the Hunter has returned! Although he has wrestled with his killer instinct now and then, it seems that Sergei Kravinoff cannot deny the predator within.

However, Kraven no longer acts as a lone wolf – instead, he hunts with a pack. To get an idea of what Spider-Man is up against in HUNTED, beginning in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #16 – available now – here is a Kravinoff family tree for him to study. Any advantage helps! (We hope.)

The patriarch. Of all the Kravens—excepting the entrant below—he has opposed Spider-Man the longest. He was also responsible for one of Spider-Man’s worst moments of trauma. Spidey may have dealt with the deaths of others, been badly hurt, and saw others in pain due to what happened to him because of his Super Hero identity. He had never, however, been buried alive, had his identity stolen, and seen the love of his life terrorized – certainly not all at once. No matter what Kraven has done since, he will always be the man who nearly destroyed Spidey’s mind, body, and soul.

Kraven’s half-brother and servant. Without Chameleon, Spider-Man may have lived an entirely Kravinoff-free life. Instead, the villain convinced his half-brother to come to the United States and hunt Spider-Man as the ultimate prize. After the Wallcrawler humiliated Kraven multiple times, the former big game hunter could never return to his previous identity. That kind of utter beating demanded retribution.

Chamelon, for his part, would get obsessed with Webhead as well. He even built robot versions of Spider-Man’s deceased parents to attempt to drive Spider-Man mad. The plan ultimately failed, but not before it drove Parker to be as dark and cruel as he ever had been to that point.

Sasha Alexander met, fell in love with, and married Kraven. While he would continue to be with other women—see the entry below—she nonetheless remained loyal to him. They had a child together, Ana, just prior to his death.

Sasha, however, could not accept her lover’s demise and set about finding a way to resurrect him. She succeeded at the cost of briefly murdering/sacrificing Kaine. Kraven, however, proved a bit ungrateful and broke her neck.

However, in this family, death has repeatedly proven to not be the end. Perhaps she would get her own resurrection…

Kraven’s long-time lover and partner, Calypso shared Kraven’s disgust for the Wallcrawler and sought to destroy him long after the Hunter’s demise. Perhaps the most memorable of these attempts came when Calypso killed her sister to gain magic powers. She then used them to seize control of the Lizard, making him more savage and brutal than ever. Spider-Man survived the encounter, but just barely.

Since then, Calypso has attacked other heroes, notably Daredevil, and even turned on the Kravinoff family when Al Kravinoff mocked her for her connection to his father. This culminated in an all-out zombie attack on one of the Kravinoff family homes which forced Spider-Man to take the side of the Hunter’s family to see them all to safety.

Kraven’s oldest son and the only true heir to the Hunt, the Grim Hunter walked in his father’s footsteps all the way to taking on Spider-Man himself.

Unfortunately, this occurred during the days of the Clone Saga, and Kaine did not care for anyone messing with the Parkers or Ben Reilly but him. He killed the Hunter in their first fight.

When Sasha resurrected Kraven, she also raised the Grim Hunter from the dead as some kind of hybrid beast. He seemed remarkably savage and his intellect appeared reduced. There proved little time to test this. Kraven killed him too, essentially insisting that sometimes dead is better.

Kraven’s second son Aloysha received all his father’s gifts without training. A mutant with super senses and the ability to speak to animals, he naturally gravitated towards the “family business.” He soon realized that he has only pursued this path because he wanted to feel a kinship to a father he barely knew. He abandoned it and moved to Hollywood like so many disillusioned young men looking for a purpose.

While in Hollywood, he enjoys some success as a producer but makes the wrong enemies. They ultimately destroy his life, including killing his girlfriend, and he elects to kill them all. This returns him fully to a life of hunting.

Despite re-embracing his family’s interests, he fails them during the resurrection of his father and was unable to bring down his prey Julia Carpenter. He did survive the ceremony, however, and has laid low since.

Kraven’s third son attempted to kill Alyosha while the latter was living in Hollywood. Nedrocci failed miserably and ended up dead by Chameleon’s hand instead. One cannot imagine Kraven would be particularly proud of this offspring.

Ana is Kraven’s youngest child with Sasha. Despite being the only Kravinoff with zero contact with their father, she also seems to be the biggest zealot in the family. She has the most enthusiasm for Sasha’s plan and proves herself the most enthusiastic during the “Grim Hunt.”

Ana survives her father’s rage after the ceremony that resurrected him. Currently, she hunts her older brother, the only surviving offspring, in the hope that killing him with prove her worth to Kraven and he will agree to mentor her.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #16, written by Nick Spencer with art by Ryan Ottley, is available now online and at your local comic shop!