Issue(s): Amazing Spider-Man #48, Amazing Spider-Man #49
Cover Date: May-Jun 67
Title: "The wings of the Vulture!" / "From the depths of defeat!"
Credits:
Stan Lee - Writer
John Romita Sr. - Penciler
John Romita Sr. - Inker

Review/plot: The Vulture, on his deathbed after a shop room accident, reveals the location of his Vulture costume to his cellmate, Blackie Drago. Blackie reveals that he was the one who caused the accident so that he could get the costume, but the Vulture seems resigned to dying and thinks Drago is a decent enough fellow to carry on his legacy.

Drago escapes from prison and adds a helmet with a short wave receiver to the outfit.

Meanwhile Peter has caught a cold from web slinging around in the snow (his costume does not offer much protection from the cold). He's at class long enough to see that Gwen Stacy has got herself a Mary Jane hairdo...

...but then the Professor sends him home.

Later, when he goes after the new Vulture, he is very sick (depicted by funny stars all around his head)...

...and he is beaten badly...

...and left for dead in the cold. He manages to get up and drag himself back to his new apartment and to bed. Aunt May and Aunt Watson show up to try and nurse Peter back to health (what kind of college calls your parents when you go home sick?) and later Mary Jane and Gwen show up to try and cheer him up as well...

...but he is too sick to leave his bedroom to see them. The worried Aunt May calls the family doctor, who apparently makes housecalls from Queens.

Kraven the Hunter sees the Vulture on TV and flies into a rage, beating up on his pet tiger...

...before going after the Vulture.

After the Vulture performs "the world's first airborne act of piracy", Kraven catches up with him and they get into a big fight. Peter hears about the fight on the radio and instead of thinking "oh good, let those two fight it out while i'm too sick to do anything" he decides that if he doesn't stop their fight, they'll tear the city apart.

While May and Anna are napping, he sneaks out and catches up with the two villains.

He tricks Kraven into zapping the Vulture with his strength-sapping ray, and then knocks out Kraven with a punch to the gut.

He gets home in time to see the doctor, who tells him he's fine. Then Aunt May calls Petter a pussywillow.

Quality Rating: C+

Historical Significance Rating: 2 - first appearance of this Blackie Drago character

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References:

• Spider-Man fought the Stilt-Man for Daredevil in Daredevil #27, but Spidey decides to not ask him to return the favor against the Vulture even though he is sick. Never mind that Spidey didn't actually accomplish anything in his fight with the Stilt-Man.
  
• Spider-Man says to Kraven that he "just whummmped you with the same kinda whump that once staggered the Hulk!". He punched the Hulk in Amazing Spider-Man annual #3.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Marvel Tales #188, Marvel Tales #189

That Hulk reference should be Amazing Spider-Man Annual #3

Updated the reference. Thanks!

The Romita work is nice. But I really love how this same story was drawn in Spider-Man: Blue, one of the few books I actually kept when I sold off almost my entire comics collection.

Why is Kraven so mad at there being a new Vulture? He only met the previous one once, didn't he?

He's mad that the new Vulture is *claiming to have destroyed Spider-Man*.

Ah, okay, that makes sense.

It seems like Stan named every other henchman he created "Blackie." See also Blackie Gaxton from ASM #11 and the mook from ASM #39.

I think the Spider-Man Classics podcast had a half-serious theory that at the time, "Blackie" was a rank/title in the New York mobs, sort of like "Don."

This was a fun story with great art. I especially liked the bit where Peter is in bed covering his Spidey costume and everyone he knows shows up. Aunt May's dialogue is very funny as well.

Hate how Romita repeatedly draws Kraven in pouncing tiger poses. Mary Jane's hair still looks sluttier not that that's a bad thing.

I liked the whole conflict between the two villains. Apparently Blackie was a common underworld nickname having seen it used in old gangster movies, TV shows like the Untouchables and Peter Gunn and even some old Batman comics.

Piggybacking off Bobby's comments, there was also Boston Blackie, a reformed safecracker and jewel thief turned detective first brought to life in the 1910's in short story form by Jack Boyle, a Chicago-born, San Francisco-based journalist who first conceived of the character while serving a prison term for check forgery (according to Wikipedia, Boyle ahad also developed a nasty opium addiction). In the 1940's, the Columbia Pictures "B" unit produced a long-running series of films with noted character actor Chester Morris in the Boston Blackie roll. These movies still show today in regular rotation Saturday Mornings on Turner Classic Movies (Let's Movie!). Of course, many years later came the heavy metal band W.A.S.P. featuring bassist/singer/songwriter Blackie Lawless, but that's a tale for another time.

Just want to add that no actual tigers were harmed during the production of this comic.

Even though this version/look of the Vulture would appear only one more time, this was the version I knew best as a little kid because of it's appearance in the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon which played in syndication regularly at the time.

In volume #13 of the Hardcover Marvel Handbooks published in the mid-to-late 2000s , Blackie's actual first name is revealed to be Raniero.

Technically Aunt May is calling the doctor, not Peter, a 'pussywillow'. By the way, was that supposed to be funny? I imagine it was just as lame a joke in the sixties as it'd be now, but then I suspect Stan Lee wrote Aunt May with the intent of making her as grating as possible.

What is it with Ditko and Romita's "beautiful women" and their solid black, soulless eyes. Like, is MJ squinting from her big carefree smile?