Spidey gets a recurring villain!
The Vulture returns.
First off, I have to admit I’m a sucker for the prison genre. I’ve watched HBO’s Oz show at least four times all the way through. I even watched the first season-and-a-half of Fox’s terrible Prison Break show before giving up. So, when this starts with old Adrian Toomes in jail, I’m loving it. Of course, he escapes.
He uses stuff he gets while in the prison machine shop, makes new wings…
…And flies over the wall! Spidey finds out…
He does an equipment check and he’s on his way.
Vulture bides his time committing petty crimes until the two fight for the first time this issue…
Spider-Man loses–and falls on his shoulder…
This is the classic issue where Spidey is in a sling–a visible sign of his injury and mortality. Again, who else was doing that in the early 1960s? Nobody. Vulture shows up at the Daily Bugle, where he meets Peter Parker–who has his arm in a sling.
To protect his identity, he adjusts his underarm webbing so nobody can tell his arm is injured.
And then they fight their way through the Daily Bugle building.
I’m going to nitpick here: Could a major Metropolitan paper really have its own printing press in one of the most expensive parts of New York City?
The fight goes to the air where we get the most important aspect of this issue…
…it’s the first time he uses a web parachute!
Actually, Spidey does a lot of new stuff with his webs in this one. Including, at the end, swinging by the Daily Bugle and, after getting an earful from everyone’s favorite publisher…
…giving him a mouthful!
This is also the issue where Peter and Betty Brant begin to show signs of really being in a relationship.
So Peter is laughed out of High School, but he’s making it as a professional. This adds a multi-layered sense of the character—he’s one person at school, another at work, and yet another in costume. Very complex characterization for a medium that hadn’t moved off the newsstands or even begun to make a play for being a “legitimate” art form. Stan Lee was a major proponent of comics-as-art, and in these early Spider-Man comics, you can see why.
And while we’re here, here’s the letters page banner:
Not their most creative title…