Today I'm going to briefly touch on some other stories which I could have featured in A Game Most Dangerous but decided not to. My rationale for excluding these stories is pretty much identical in each case: they are stories in which super heroes are placed into a version of The Most Dangerous Game. That's not an automatic disqualifier (it worked very well in The Dreamer, you'll recall) but most of these stories do not use the island setting or even place the hero within any sort of secluded locale. The heroes tend to within their usual environment, be it Manhattan or Gotham City, with allies no more than a phone call away. Then, too, super heroes have abilities which place them above that of a proper protagonist for a riff on The Most Dangerous Game and the more the hunt has to scale up to overcome the changes in power and environment, the less it has to do with Richard Connell's story.
Therefore, I'm just going to briefly touch on some other stories of this type.
The largest shout-out belongs to the character of Kraven the Hunter, who debuted in Amazing Spider-Man #15 (1964). Indeed, Kraven is a Russian who hunts big game; bored with the challenges of animals, he sets his sights on costumed heroes for his prey. Pretty much every Kraven story owes a debt to Richard Connell.
You have to hand it to Otto Orion, an intergalactic big game hunter who decided to hunt Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes in "The Hunter!" by Jim Shooter and George Papp (Adventure Comics #358, 1967). Hunting that many heroes is a tall order! And obviously, he failed.
Batman has been in the Most Dangerous Game scenario at least once in Detective Comics #401 (1970) by Frank Robbins, Bob Brown and Joe Giella when a villain called the Stalker hunted him through Gotham City.
Jack Russell, the Werewolf by Night, faced Joshua Kane, would-be hunter of werewolves in Werewolf by Night #4 (1973) by Gerry Conway, Mike Ploog and Frank Bolle. It can't help but remind us of "Isle of the Beast".
Mike Grell placed his hero Jon Sable into a Most Dangerous Game story in Shaman's Tears #8 (1995).
In Wolverine #158 (2001), Joe Pruett, Sunny Lee and Harry Candelario pit Wolverine against Zaran the Hunter. Zaran sets up the familiar Most Dangerous Game scenario by hunting Wolverine on an island.
In Ultimate X-Men #54-57 (2005), Brian K. Vaughan, Stuart Immonen, Wade Von Grawbadger and Scott Koblish created an 'ultimate' version of Mojo who would hunt mutants as a form of entertainment; Vaughan's story was titled "The Most Dangerous Game" to ensure no one missed the reference.
Even super villains get in on the act; in the story "Predators" by John Ostrander, R. B. Silva and Alexandre Palamaro (Secret Six #23, 2010) the Secret Six were brought to an island and hunted by a whole team of big game hunters.
And there was some nimrod named Nimrod who tried to hunt Superman in Action Comics #10 (2012) by Grant Morrison, Rags Morales and Rick Bryant. What a dope.
Tomorrow I'll wrap up A Game Most Dangerous by comparing the 12 entries which received scores!
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