It’s more important for its significance going forward than for his showing here as one villain among many (would you believe, six). When our as-yet unnamed winged thief returns next, he begins his occasional partnership with the rest of the Sinister Six, a confederation of enemies who team up in the first Amazing Spider-Man annual in 1964. His craftiest move in these early stories is, once he has guards for a diamond shipment looking skyward warily, The Vulture simply pops out of a manhole to make the snatch! The Vulture is also the first of the Spider-Man’s Rogues to re-appear, as he does in Amazing Spider-Man #7. His technology-based abilities provide an obstacle that requires not only Spider-Man’s agility and strength, but uniquely, his Peter Parker side’s love of science, to create an engaging gadget to screw up the Vulture’s electromagnetically powered harness! Their battle features the first time Parker starts out with the idea to take photographs for money, a career that becomes a recurrent story engine for decades. For one, he makes a terrific test of Spider-Man’s new combat skills, as dizzyingly depicted by co-creator Steve Ditko.
As super-villains go, The Vulture was not a bad start. We’re still so early in the Marvel Age at this point, a foe whose power was, primarily, flight and strength, makes a formidable challenge- maybe not as imaginative as what is to follow, but a nice use of visual and a great combatant for the neophyte wall-crawler. His post-retirement plans were quite a bit more exciting than a 401 K and a house in Florida. The second story in the issue introduces another villain featured in Spider-Man: Homecoming- The Tinkerer, another rogue inventor, played by Michael Chernus. A conflict of youth versus age, the Vulture was an inventor who used his then-rare advantage to become a daring thief. The second issue of Amazing Spider-Man, cover dated May, 1963, featured the wall-crawler’s first super-powered enemy.
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