Spider-Man: The Animated Series Episode Twenty-Six: Neogenic Nightmare, Chapter 13 - Shriek of the Vulture

Shriek of the Vulture

First Aired: February 17th, 1995

Synopsis: Norman Osborn tries convincing the board of directors of Toomes Aerodynamics to sell the company to him. Its CEO, Adrian Toomes, plans to stop Osborn, and tests out his new equipment as the Vulture, which lets him fly and drain the youth from people, temporarily de-aging him and aging up the person he's drained. Spider-Man fights him, but Vulture flees when he starts aging up. Peter later goes to an awards ceremony where Professor Connors is granted the Toomes Foundation grant, and he declares that Debbie Whitman will be his lab assistant. Peter starts feeling morose about his own love life and leaves the building, only to encounter Vulture going after Osborn. He saves Osborn, and manages to save a picture of Vulture with his true age, identifying him as Toomes. Peter tries to warn Debbie, now working at a lab run by the Toomes Foundation, but she doesn't listen to him. While there, Peter also runs into Flash Thompson, and he tells Flash that Debbie's interested in him.

Vulture drains Professor Connors' youth and reveals that he's the one who Hammerhead sold the Tablet of Time to, from which his age-draining technology is derived. He heads off to capture Harry Osborn, who's attending a play of Mary Jane's which Peter has also been invited to. Peter saves Harry as Spider-Man, but is hurt when he sees Mary Jane comforting him. Later, Debbie calls Peter right as Vulture drains her age, and Peter goes to Toomes' penthouse as Spider-Man. He runs into Flash Thompson there, who's brought flowers for Debbie. Spider-Man fights Vulture, who ends up activating a bomb which will blow up the penthouse, before incapacitating Spider-Man and leaving. Flash revives Spider-Man, who gets them out of the penthouse before it explodes, but shortly afterwards Vulture ambushes Spider-Man. He drains his youth and then unmasks Spider-Man, now an old man.

Subplots:

• Peter meets with Mary Jane before her play, and she reveals that she's gotten a letter from her father, who left her family and she's never met before. He wants to meet with her, and she wants Peter's support.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Yes, Vulture temporarily had the power to drain youth in the comics, and yes, it was just as bad there too
• When Vulture mentions his bomb to Spider-Man, he describes it as "a self-destruct bomb". As opposed to, y'know, all those bombs which don't self-destruct.

Review: While I do like this episode a fair bit, I think that it's a bit short of the potential it could have hit, which is a bit of a pity given how much stuff it gets right. Vulture's costume may be pretty horrible, but his motivation isn't, and the fact that he's going after Norman Osborn automatically takes away a lot of the sympathy we might have had for another character. Him going after Harry and Debbie fits fairly organically into the plot, and allows Spider-Man to naturally know about the fight. Speaking of Debbie, I've found myself loving the subplot with her and Flash, and I hope they stay together.

Unfortunately, the Vulture lacks a lot of what makes his comics counterpart so cool. The age-draining is boring at best, ridiculous at worst, and the fact that two of the times Spider-Man encounters him, it's entirely coincidental stretches credibility a bit. He also keeps running away from fights so that the scene can end, something that also annoyed me when Morbius did it. It's like how the 1967 series had Spider-Man constantly getting beaten up in the middle of the episode so that the plot couldn't be resolved too early.

Overall though, I did like this episode, and after vampires, spider-monsters, and the Tablet of Time, it's nice to go back to a bit more of a traditional Spider-Man story. I may not like this incarnation of Vulture, but that doesn't mean that the plot he's in is inherently bad.