It's a plane! It's a Vulture! It's An Alien!
A fun little double story issue this one, one good villain, one set of not good villains. Firstly we see the introduction of The Vulture, a nefarious individual who has constructed a set of wings which he of course uses to commit dastardly aerial assaults. Can our spider catch himself a criminal vulture? Second we have The Terrible Tinkerer and his mysterious crew offering cheap radio repairs! Spider-Man senses something is afoot and investigates these hideous purveyors of cheap radio repair.
I actually enjoyed the plot here. The Vulture was a reasonable villain, with a couple of interesting schemes. Of our two standard villain modus operandi, magnetism and radiation, he plumped for the former, using magnetism to stay in the air. Spider-Man was able to nab the guy, but not before taking quite a few photos for J. Jonah Jameson’s magazine. Yes this issue introduced us to Parker’s long running photography gig. The second story had an alien foe, so I’m instantly docking it points. In comics aliens should be significant foes (unless it’s one of those “Galactic” comics) like world ending multi issue events. Not throwaway foes to be dispatched fairly easily. These sadly are the latter a trope often utilised by Stan Lee at the time.
Ditko’s art is good, nothing special. He does a wonderful job on Spider-Man, but Parker suffers under his hand. He looks a little too old and too severe, more middle-aged than a teenager. I also wasn’t blown away by the vultures design, he looks more like a pantomime villain than a comic book fiend. I think it’s the white feathered collar that really does it.
This is a solid if unremarkable double feature. We get some character development in Peter finding his job and Spider-Man is starting to make more of the wise cracks we would later so tightly associate with him, although we are a long way from his glorious barbed zingers of modern times. It’s a three star comic that falls back on aliens. So I’m docking it a star. You can’t stop me! Nobody can stop me! AHAHAHA!
With Pictures Like These, I Can Almost Stand Living In The Same City With Spider-Man!
J. Jonah Jameson
