Last issue, the Vulture carried Spider-Man high into
the air before dropping him, letting him plummet to the ground below! As
Spider-Man plummets faster and faster towards the ground, he reaches out with
his webbing, fashioning a web net that catches him and propels him back up.
With his momentum lessened, he’s able to swing to a nearby building, where he
discovers that stunt made him run out of webs! Another few seconds and he may
not have made it! Spider-Man thinks about the events of last issue, and deigns
to try and answer the questions of why the Vulture killed that girl, and then
went after the lab assistant. Peter heads back to the biology lab to see if he
can find any answers, where he runs into Doctor Shallot, one of the professors
there. He leaves Shallot to his cleaning up of the lab, and runs into Flash and
Mary Jane on his way to the registration office. At the registration office,
Peter accesses the records and discovers that the girl who was killed, Gloria
Jenkins, looks almost exactly like the lab assistant, Christine Murrow! Not
only that, they were apparently roommates!
Later, at the Daily Bugle, Peter goes snooping around
the back issues, before getting chewed out by Jameson for not getting any
photos of the Vulture! Peter heads back out as Spidey, content with the
information he learned before Jameson yelled at him. Apparently, the real
Vulture is still in jail, meaning the one who’s been causing all this trouble
is an imposter! Spidey then interrogates a snitch named Mouthpiece Moylan and
learns the new Vulture was last seen around the docks. Peter heads there and decides
he’d be less conspicuous snooping around out of costume. Peter senses some
commotion from an alley and finds the Vulture having just attacked a man and
stolen some kind of chemical. The Vulture grabs Peter and carries him high into
the air, bemoaning how this is now the second time he’s been found snooping
around! He drops Peter into the river, who is able to crawl out with the help
of some dock workers. Still, something the Vulture said struck a chord with
Peter, and he realizes he needs to get to Mary Jane as quick as possible!
He takes a cab to Mary Jane’s apartment, and on the
way in he learns from the janitor that Christine and Gloria often switched
clothes. This is the last piece of the puzzle Peter needed. When Mary Jane
answers her door, she tells Peter that she’s decided to tell the police what
she saw and Peter and her load into the still waiting cab. Almost immediately,
the Vulture swoops down, causing the cab to swerve and crash into a wall. He
grabs MJ and flies off again, while Peter changes to Spidey. Spidey quickly gets
MJ back and safely into the cab, while the Vulture flies off. An hour later,
Spider-Man heads back to the biology lab where he finds Christine and the
Vulture, who he now knows is actually Doctor Shallot! Shallot attacks Spidey,
until Spidey’s able to pour some of that chemical from earlier down Vulture’s
throat, reverting him back to Dr. Shallot.
Spidey then summarizes what he knows happened, how
Shallot and Christine were working on a bio-mutation project with the Vulture’s
wings, transforming Shallot into the Vulture! Shallot snapped and tried to kill
Christine for knowing too much, but accidentally killed her roommate instead,
witnessed by Mary Jane. He then realized that the chemicals were an antidote to
change Shallot back, and that the Vulture must have been Shallot when he
recognized Peter sneaking around as himself, when the only other time had been
right before he ran into Shallot. Spidey asks Christine why she helped him and
she admits she was scared he would kill her if she didn’t. Spidey then points
out that he has a friend who had a similar fear but got over it, and that
letting him try and kill while she does nothing, makes her little better than
him!
Excelsioring your collection