The Hunter

“Vitriol the Hunter,” a vampires-in-the-future tale co-written and pencilled by Billy Martin of pop-punk band Good Charlotte, has been a long time in the making. Comic Book Resources first announced the mini-series in July of 2009 with a targeted release date of February, 2010. The book finally hits the stands only three years late, but unfortunately, it could have used some more time on the drawing board. “Vitriol the Hunter” is Nimirus Vitriol, a moody young man whose self-appointed task is to cleanse the near-future city of Basilika of its vampiric scourge. Opposing him is the vampire lord Barthus, who maintains a strict goth-club dress code in his boardroom as he upsets the power structures of society. Vitriol is aided by Danion, a pharmacist who stitches up his cuts after hours, and he shares the streets with a SWAT force called the Defense Initiative, who do what Vitriol does but with a lot more bumbling about and dying. If all this sounds awfully familiar, it’s because “Vitrio

After an impressive 10 years on the series, writer Dan Slott’s run on Amazing Spider-Man has reached its final stretch, as he prepares to wrap up his tenure on the series with issue #801. However, in reflecting on the past decade in an interview with CBR, Slott elaborated on the absence one of the web-slinger’s most notable foes: Kraven the Hunter. “…I’ve been keenly aware of what characters I haven’t written,” Slott explained to CBR. “I barely touched Kraven. Everyone has their head canon, and I was like, I’m not going anywhere near that character after the classic J.M. DeMatteis ‘Last Hunt’ story. To me, that’s where his story ends.” RELATED: Amazing Spider-Man: Go Down Swinging Claims Its First Victim “The only times I’ve really used [Kraven] have been in flashback, like in the Spidey/Torch miniseries that took place before ‘Last Hunt,'” he continued. “W