"Get me pictures of -- THE VULTURE!"
Very dynamic but very wordy. The Vulture's introduction is definitely a few ticks higher than The Tinkerer in quality and managing to keep me awake.

(Cover date: May, 1963)

Okay, now we're getting into the part where young me became more interested. I knew the Vulture! Not my favorite villain, not anyone's favorite villain, but a classic villain. And his debut is filled to the brim with 60s comics nonsense:


The Announcement of the Transfer:
This would not happen. No company would announce and make a public spectacle of a transfer of highly sought after commodities like diamonds. Especially not with a crazy, unstoppable winged old man roaming the skies.

Vulture's Outside of the Box Thinking:
While this is admittedly clever in a "It's so stupid that it must work" sort of way, there is no way that the police wouldn't have a ground presence larger than a few guards. And how did the Vulture know they'd walk right over the manhole? There's a frightful lack of anything in the panels in this particular sequence to derive any idea of where these people are and where they're going, but I guess I'm not as smart as the Vulture.

No Noise:
Apparently, the Vulture makes no noise. He doesn't have to even flap those wings. It's more like falling with style. They're there to guide him rather than provide any sort of lift through the manipulation of air pressures.

Harnessing Magnetic Power:
Look, we get a single panel explanation of this. Stan Lee didn't understand how magnets really work. It got us cool characters like Magneto, at least. Same with transistors or... Chemicals. Really, anything scientific that you learn from these comics, just throw that knowledge out. They're all based in the most rudimentary knowledge. Stan Lee probably would've stuck his face in Tricho machine, let's be real. I don't understand what the thinking is here. Does he mean that Vulture is manipulating geomagnetism with his wings? Is it more localized than that? Does Stan Lee think the ground is so magnetically charged that one could repel themselves from it with the proper device? And what is an anti-magnetic inverter? How do you invert anti-magnets? What is an anti-magnet? It'd make more sense as a regular magnetic inverter right? What must repel, now must attract? And how does that work? Did Spider-Man's device send a surge of electricity through Vulture's wings somehow reversing the polarity of Vulture's wings?? And how does vulture maintain that polarity when he's battling in the skies of New York and doing "Fast Loop-The-Loops"?? This doesn't make any sense.


With that out of the way, we get some small continuity inconsistencies already. J. Jonah Jameson now works at Jameson Publications/J. Jonah Jameson Publishing, and publishes NOW Magazine. Also, I guess between issues, Aunt May warmed up to the idea of letting Peter shoulder the weight of their financial woes after secretly pawning jewelry last issue.

But let's not only focus on the discontinuity! We get some big developments here! Peter finally has his job as a Newspaper (Magazine) photographer. Keep it up, Pete, you'll never retire! Spider-Man also adds extra web cartridges to his repertoire, and of course, his camera. All that's left is his Spider-Signal! (Spoilerz!) Also, while they aren't given much of a spotlight, Liz and Flash are still decidedly Peter's supporting cast now. I love how that posse of asshole kids all bully him and yet, they're the closest he has to friends. They even invite him to hang out with them and vow to protect him! Now that's friendship, at least as far as I've ever known it!

This was a solid story for Spidey, despite everything.

You know what wasn't though? The second story in this issue, introducing the Tinkerer. It seems as though Stan and Steve were unclear about where the ASM title was going to go. At the time, Marvel's lineup was still very caught up in the genre titles that preceded the superhero boom. Every issue had some sci-fi element, and that is decidedly not something associated Spider-Man. Now, to the chagrin of at least... five disgruntled Spidey fans, sci-fi definitely has a place. Spidey's whole origin is a sci-fi nightmare. And so are his rogues. But I feel like that becomes a harder pill to swallow when his rogues are an unnamed throwaway conquerer alien race, and the issue ends with Peter holding up a Scooby-Doo mask and vowing to never tell anyone about it. There's a lot of possibly more stupid wackiness here. I won't give it the time I gave the Vulture story because it... honestly, does not deserve it. I will say that airholes work both ways. And more Spoilerz, but I'm much happier that Tinkerer isn't actually an alien. That's so out of place and a product of early day uncertainty about the title. This story doesn't have the benefit of progressing the character forward like the Vulture story. It is a quintessential back-up. The story ends with a panel of Spider-Man just standing there awkwardly like, "I don't know what that was either, but please come back next month!" It's just too goofy for a book about magnetic old men hovering over a city gripped in fear.

Quote of the issue: "Take a Bonus and Go Out and Buy Yourself Some Twist Records!" more

Thinker story was weird even for marvel comics. Vulture story was just boring