Spider-Man (1967) Episode Sixteen: The Vulture's Prey / The Dark Terrors

The Vulture's Prey

First Aired: December 23rd, 1967

Synopsis: Swinging around the city, Spider-Man overhears an alarm in a penthouse ringing. Upon investigating, he finds that the Vulture is back and has just robbed the penthouse, although he is unable to stop him from getting away. The next day, J. Jonah Jameson is sitting in his office when he notes that a nearby clock tower is wrong. Since no one's fixed it even though he's complained in the past, he heads there himself to do so, only to find out that it's the Vulture's hideout.When J. Jonah Jameson mentions that he needs to be at a rocket testing, Vulture is intrigued.


Peter Parker heads to the rocket testing expecting to find Jonah there, only to find the Vulture stealing the new rocket. Vulture keeps using Jonah for information, stealing some diamonds from a merchant and trying to steal a new laser gun, while Spider-Man keeps trying to stop him. With Jonah having been missing all of this time, Betty Brant investigates his office while Peter is there and finds a note saying that the clock tower needs to be fixed. At the same time, Jonah has turned on the clock tower's chimes in the hopes that someone will come and free him. The two clues tell Spider-Man to head over there, where he is quick to web up the Vulture and to rescue Jonah (but only after Jonah says please).

Webbing Does Not Work That Way

• Back in the Lizard story of Episode Two, I mentioned that the way Spider-Man was travelling through the swamp might have been his webbing turning into a propellor, although it was hard to tell. A similar thing happens here when Spider-Man's on the water, although this time the animation is pretty ambiguous - his webbing is definitely turning into a propellor. For bonus points, he's also standing on webbing skis when it happens.

Miscellaneous Notes

• Decades later, in the video game based on the first Spider-Man film, Vulture will also have his base in a clock tower. In that version, he's rigged it with bombs and traps throughout which you have to avoid as you ascend.
• When Spider-Man's trying to stop Vulture from stealing the rocket, he webs him to it, only for Vulture to use it as something of an ersatz Goblin Glider for almost the entirety of the rest of the story. He even manages to park it in his clock tower when going to visit Jonah at one point!

Review: If you read that synopsis and thought that it sounded a little rushed, that's because it was - I want to keep my synopses to two paragraphs for brevity's sake - and there was a lot to fit in here. This is probably one of the meatier plots we've gotten in the show so far - we have J. Jonah Jameson captured with Betty and Peter trying to find him, Vulture flying around robbing things, Peter trying to stop Vulture, and all the while Jonah himself is trying to escape. Sure, it's not that much more complex than most plots, but there's still a sense that each scene is contributing to the plot rather than half of them killing time.

By far the most entertaining portion of the episode is Jonah's interactions with Vulture. Half of the time Jonah's being his usual proud self, the other half he's cowering before the Vulture. There's a fantastic part midway through the episode where Jonah's talking to the Vulture and has to duck every few seconds as a pendulum swings right by his head. For bonus points, while it's easy to see Jonah (particularly this cartoon's version of him) immediately giving up his information in return for his safety, Jonah actually does a pretty good job at avoiding doing so, either giving away information by accident or under duress.

The downside to all of this is that Jonah's information makes Vulture's crime spree feel fairly aimless - I can see why he'd want everything that he steals, but it'd all feel a bit weightier if he was trying to build up to something. And of course, there's the usual issue with Spider-Man having difficulties defeating the villain right until the end, at which point a thwip of webbing does the job in seconds (although to his credit, Vulture was in the air all of the other times, and he's caught off-guard at the end). Overall, this isn't the best episode of the show, but it's far, far from the worst.

The Dark Terrors

Synopsis: Spider-Man is swinging around when he overhears Betty Brant screaming. Investigating, he finds that the shadow of a large cat is threatening her. When he tries to stop it, he finds that he can't hurt it, but it can hurt him. When Betty tells J. Jonah Jameson about it at the Daily Bugle, Jonah is sceptical about the event actually happening, right before he gets multiple phone calls about similar shadows appearing all over the city. Peter goes off to take photos before changing to Spider-Man, but unbeknownst to him, the Phantom, the person behind the phenomenon, is behind it and watching him. The Phantom sends a new shadow to defeat Spider-Man, which is successful.

The Phantom next sends out shadows to rob a jewellery store. When he sees that Spider-Man has recovered, he sends the shadow of a tank to stop him, which Spider-Man is eventually able to stop by shining a bright light at it. Upon hearing about another robbery, Spider-Man follows the shadow of a gorilla to the Phantom's hideout. After getting into a fight with the Phantom and his shadows, Spider-Man is able to defeat him. In the aftermath, Jonah is momentarily frightened by the gigantic shadow of a spider...only to see that the creature making the shadow is exactly as small as you'd expect it to be.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• One of the neat ideas this episode gives us is that whenever the Phantom creates a shadow, he usually makes a shadow puppet with his hands before bringing it to life, something you don't often see when a work plays around with living shadows. Even if the shadows look nothing like something that could be made with someone's hands (how do you make an octopus?!), it's a cool idea.
• At one point, the Phantom comments, "Spider-Man! My shadows will find him, and this time...", complete with trailing off at the end there. I like to think that he had no idea what he was actually going to do differently this time.
• When the shadow tank is chasing Spider-Man, it's able to drive directly up building walls to get to Spider-Man. I doubt that it's the first vehicle in fiction to have such an ability, but it immediately put me in mind of Amazing Spider-Man #160, in which Spider-Man's Spider-Mobile is fitted out with the ability to drive up walls and is turned against him.

Review: As I'm sitting here trying to sum up my thoughts on this episode, I'm finding that they're very mixed. The living shadows concept honestly isn't that ridiculous; if you can believe that the Phantom created a device to bring shadows to life then there's nothing too egregious they do here, as opposed to, say, Parafino's wax statues from past episodes, which seem to change abilities between scenes.

But at the same time, the villain is the bloody Phantom. He didn't do a lot to impress me in his last appearance, and while I'd be lying if I said that this wasn't a marked improvement over that story, he's still not exactly setting the world on fire. His brilliant plan is, of course, to steal things so that he can make money, at least until he starts ranting towards the end of the episode and starts talking about how he's going to make an army of shadows and rule over them. It's nothing we haven't seen before, and the character himself isn't interesting, so it doesn't do anything for me.

In thinking that, though, I recognise that there have been plenty of villains in the past who had unambitious plans, whose appearances I still enjoyed. Heck, the first story of this episode had Vulture stealing whatever J. Jonah Jameson told him about, and that worked fine. So what does it say about the Phantom that when it's his turn to do a generic robbery, I'm bored and frustrated? He's not an interesting villain, and his presence honestly brings the episode down - I think that if, say, Doctor Octopus had been behind the living shadows, I would have been a lot more entertained even if nothing else in the episode had changed.