Amazing Spider-Man #127. The Vulture - or is it?

(Cover from December 1973.)

"The Dark Wings Of Death!"

Words by Gerry Conway.
Pencils by Ross Andru.
Inks by Giacoia and Hunt.
Lettering by Tom Orzechowski.
Colours by Glynis Wein.

Yo ho ho. It's December. Time to get the turkey out and remember old friends. Or at least to get the Vulture out and remember old foes.

Or is it?

There's something different about the Vulture this time round. He's more bird-like than once he was - and seemingly more homicidal. He may have been ruthless in the past but he never seemed the type for the cold-blooded murder of women in the streets.

I have to admit I've always had mixed feelings about this tale. On the one hand, I like the fact that Spider-Man enters Murder She Wrote territory with what's basically a whodunnit. Off the top of my head, I'm not sure he's ever done that before and it's a nice precursor to Conway's subsequent career in television.

But what seems all wrong is the portrayal of Mary Jane as a woman cowering in her apartment, refusing to go to the police because she's too scared. This is a woman who's encountered numerous threats in her time in the strip and seemed fazed by none of it. Suddenly, she's a cowering, trembling wreck. Having got rid of Gwen Stacy, Conway seems here to be writing MJ as though she were the late departed blonde. Much as I like his era on the title, it has to be said there are times when the behaviour of his cast seems to be more dependent on the needs of the story than on their own inherent character.

Then again, the depiction of our hero's a little odd too. Knowing that Mary Jane's on the Vulture's hit list, after losing track of him you'd expect the wall-crawler to head straight back to her apartment and make sure the villain doesn't get her. Instead he goes over to see the Human Torch, to have a laugh and a joke working on the Spider-Mobile. Oi! Parker! Your new squeeze could be getting murdered while you do that, you plank!

For that matter, the Vulture's also acting a little oddly. Escaping from a police net and blinded by Spider-Man's webbing, he grabs our hero, thinking he's grabbing the woman he came to ESU to get. Why? Why did he think Spidey was this mysterious Christine woman when she was nowhere in sight only seconds earlier?

One person acting in character is Harry Osborn - well, in the character he's recently become. His descent into madness and evil continues apace and that for, some of us, is a more than welcome sight.

Amazing Spider-Man #126. The Kangaroo returns

(Cover from November 1973.)

"The Kangaroo Bounces Back!"

Words by Gerry Conway.

Pencils by Ross Andru.

Inks by Jim Mooney.

Lettering by Artie Simek.

Colours by Linda Lessmann.

A Boomerang. Perhaps it's what Gerry Conway mostly needed; a stick that always comes back.

As mentioned elsewhere in these pages, two of his defining traits as Spider-Man writer were a love of bringing back old foes (a stick that always comes back) and a liking for having a minor villain under the influence of another villain (after all, a boomerang can't work without someone to throw it).

Here we get both, with the evil Jonas Harrow, last seen in issue #114, back to repeat his endeavours to create a super-lackey. This time he does it with the Kangaroo, surely one of the least worthy villains Lee, Romita and Mooney ever concocted. The story makes no secret of the uselessness of the character, with Spider-Man ridiculing him on their reacquaintance; and so Conway does what he always does with characters he sees no use for.

He kills him.

It has to be said that Harrow's plans make no great sense. He's a scientist and yet sends his lackey on a mission into the heart of a nuclear inferno, a mission guaranteed to achieve nothing but the Australian's death. It's also hard to believe that just standing behind an open lead door in a room being flooded with deadly radiation would save Spidey from sharing the Kangaroo's fate. Oh well, the simple truth is the strip needs Web-Head and it doesn't need bouncing boy, so the Antipodean antagonist dies and Spidey lives.

Conway's third love in the strip is of course injecting humour into the trials and tribulations of our hero and we start to see the full emergence of that with Spidey's deal to build a car. Some people view this particular strand with horror. Some with affection. It's going to be interesting to see how I view it on my planned re-reading.

An appealingly clad MJ finally dumps Harry. Harry's turning evil. This is more like it.

J Jonah Jameson keeps his dying son in a free hospital? I'd have thought better of even that old skinflint.

Amazing Spider-Man #125. Man-Wolf

(Cover from October 1973.)

"Wolfhunt!"

Words by Gerry Conway.
Pencils by Ross Andru.
Inks by John Romita and Tony Mortellaro.
Lettering by Artie Simek.
Colours by Dave Hunt.

Who could take against a man called Ross Andru?

No one could.

The man only has first names, and that means you just have to like him. Even if you were trying to address him contemptuously by his surname, you'd still be calling him by a first name.

Happily, in this issue, there's nothing to take against. If a replacement was needed for Gil Kane, Andru was the perfect choice. Not only had he already been drawing the web-spinner for his other mag Marvel Team-Up but his love of extreme angles and exaggerated perspective was similar enough to Kane's to make the break from one artist to another almost seamless, and, here, he gets into his stride straight away, revelling in Spider-Man's agility and three dimensionality of movement. In fact, for the first few panels, his pencilling disguised by Romita and Mortellaro, it could be possible for the casual observer to not even notice that Kane had gone.

That aside, it's a good solid issue, nicely melodramatic, with Mary Jane acting a little oddly but that can be put down to the fact that, after years of determined shallowness, she doesn't actually know how to handle people with serious issues. Such a thing doesn't come naturally. It has to be learned and she's still at a stage in her development where her lack of judgement means she'll tend to listen to people, without the sense to know if she should be listening to them.

As for John Jameson. It's odd that, if the gem that turns him into the Man-Wolf is grafted to his skin, he's not tried seeing a surgeon about removing it. There is, of course, the question of why, if its powers respond to the rays of the moon, he hasn't tried covering it up.