Marvel Tales #139 : Starring Spider-Man in "Duel to the Death with the Vulture"

by Stan Lee, Steve Ditko (Illustrator)

"Duel to the Death with the Vulture! New York City is being terrorized by a new criminal called the Vulture. He is equipped with artificial wings that allow him to swoop down on his victims, snatch their valuables, and be gone before they know what is happening. Nobody has been able to photograph him, and J. Jonah Jameson needs pictures to illustrate his Vulture feature article for Now magazine. Peter Parker decides to try to photograph the criminal in action. Selling the photographs will help him and his Aunt May make ends meet. Meanwhile, the Vulture is in his Staten Island hideout (an abandoned silo), making plans to hit the Park Avenue Jewelry Exchange. As he flies out over the city, he is spotted by Spider-Man, who is equipped with a miniature camera once owned by his late Uncle Ben. Spider-Man manages to take some photographs of the Vulture, but the Vulture sees him, attacks him from behind, knocks him out, and dumps him into a water tank. After breaking out of the water tank, Spider-Man heads home, where he adds some improvements to his devices and develops his photographs. The next day, Peter Parker arrives at J. Jonah Jameson's office with pictures of the Vulture. The publisher is very impressed and pays him well. Then Peter heads for the Park Avenue Diamond Exchange, which the Vulture tauntingly announced to the public as the site of his next robbery. While everybody expects the Vulture to strike from above, he strikes from beneath a manhole cover, seizes a case of diamonds, and flees through the New York City sewer system. Spider-Man uses his Spider-Sense to track him down, and wins their battle with an anti-magnetic inverter, a device he built to counteract the magnetic power that the Vulture uses for flight. The Vulture is left for the police, and Peter Parker has photographs of the Vulture's capture, which he sells to J. Jonah Jameson for a large sum of money. Peter and Aunt May are able to make ends meet.

22 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1982

About the author

Stan Lee (born Stanley Martin Lieber) was an American writer, editor, creator of comic book superheroes, and the former president and chairman of Marvel Comics.

With several artist co-creators, most notably Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, he co-created Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Thor as a superhero, the X-Men, Iron Man, the Hulk, Daredevil, the Silver Surfer, Dr. Strange, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Scarlet Witch, The Inhumans, and many other characters, introducing complex, naturalistic characters and a thoroughly shared universe into superhero comic books. He subsequently led the expansion of Marvel Comics from a small division of a publishing house to a large multimedia corporation.