Kraven the Hunter comic art

KRAVEN THE HUNTER

Kraven the Hunter comic art
Wednesday, November 4, 2026Earth-616 canonNew Avengers Vol. 2 #10 (2011)
Today's Fact
In 1959, twelve years before he ever hunted a spider, Sergei Kravinoff took Nick Fury’s deal — freedom for his crimes, in exchange for one deniable mission.
BEFORE SPIDER-MAN, KRAVEN WAS AN AVENGER
The Featured Fact

Kraven the Hunter spent decades as Spider-Man’s most theatrical stalker — but in New Avengers Vol. 2 #10 (2011), Brian Michael Bendis revealed that Sergei Kravinoff had once been an Avenger. In 1959, Nick Fury quietly assembled a black-ops “Avengers Initiative” out of people who could never be seen on a roster — and Kraven, then facing charges, was offered the deal of his life: serve, and the charges disappeared.

The lineup tells you what kind of team this was: Dominic Fortune, Ulysses Bloodstone, the original Silver Sable (Ernst Sablinova), Sabretooth, Namora — whom Kraven was dating at the time — and Dum Dum Dugan at Fury’s side. Their target was a new Red Skull gathering power in Europe and sitting on a stash of Super Soldier Serum; the secret Avengers killed him and took the serum. No press, no legend, no file that was ever meant to surface.

Howard Chaykin’s five-issue Avengers: 1959 (2011) picked the team up from there, sending them against Geoffrey Sydenham and the occult outfit ICON. The 1959 Avengers remain canon’s quietest lineup — a hunter, a monster-hunter, a mercenary princess, a mutant killer and an Atlantean royal, erased from the record. Which means, in Marvel chronology, Kraven was an Avenger four years before the Avengers existed.

Why It's Obscure
The pieces around the story that most retellings leave out.
1959

THE YEAR IT HAPPENED

Fury’s Initiative predates the real Avengers by four years. The name started as a cover for a deniable hit squad, not a banner for heroes.
THE DEAL

FREEDOM, ITEMIZED

Every recruit was compromised — wanted, exiled, or expendable. Fury’s pitch was simple: one mission, and your record is wiped clean.
NAMORA

THE GIRLFRIEND ON THE ROSTER

Kraven and the Atlantean Namora were romantically involved — one of comics’ oddest couples, smuggled into canon by a flashback published forty years after the fact.
2011

HIDDEN FOR 52 YEARS

The story stayed untold until New Avengers Vol. 2 #10 in 2011 — a half-century of Spider-Man comics in which nobody mentioned Kraven’s first team.
Sources
Every fact on this page was checked against at least two independent sources before publication.

Bullpen Bulletins

  1. Marvel.com — Namora, Explained Marvel’s own account of the 1959 team: Fury’s recruits, the dropped charges, Kraven’s service, and his romance with Namora.
  2. Wikipedia — Avengers 1959 Overview of the Chaykin miniseries and the New Avengers Vol. 2 #10 flashback that introduced Fury’s secret 1959 roster.
  3. SpiderFan — New Avengers Vol. 2 #10 review Issue-level summary of the flashback: the Red Skull target, the Super Soldier Serum, and the team’s bargain with Fury.