Adrian ToomesVulture

Uncontrolled Damage

Following the Battle of New York, Adrian Toomes’ salvage company arrived on the scene to clean up the mess left by the confrontation between the Avengers and the Chitauri. However, Toomes, having put a considerable amount of money in up front on new equipment for what was going to be a lucrative job, found out he and his crew had been removed and replaced by the Department of Damage Control, an agency founded by the American government and Tony Stark AKA Iron Man. Embittered at not being able to do his job and make money for his family, Toomes and his employees switched up their business model to the extreme, reverse-engineering stolen Chitauri technology into weapons that they sell to the highest bidders. As more Super Hero related events continue to take place on Earth, Toomes and his men continue to acquire tech left in the aftermath of these incidents in order to create and sell more weapons.

To help with him heists and to make himself more formidable, Toomes fashions a flying exo-suit, transforming himself into a Vulture who is more than capable of stalking its prey.

Fearsome Flight

Created by his colleague Phineas Mason, Toomes’ exo-suit is comprised of a steel harness attached to metallic wings that are powered by a jet propulsion system that allow him to fly through the sky with apparent ease. The exo-suit also provides Toomes with some body armor, along with an accompanying helmet and mask and razor sharp talons on the feet, which can be used both to attack foes or to help secure stolen items. To protect himself from the cold during his flight missions, Adrian wears a fur-lined bomber jacket.

Toomes also will sometimes use the weaponry and equipment he and his men have created from their stolen technology, including Chitauri guns and the Matter Phase Shifter developed by Mason that allows him to pass through walls during his criminal activity.

Toomes’ Terror

For years, Toomes and his crew are unopposed in their black-market sales.

However, when Spider-Man begins fighting crime, Vulture takes notice, as the young hero begins interfering in his business. Toomes only considers Spider-Man his foe because the arachnid-inspired crimefighter gets in the way of his profit margins. After he realizes Spider-Man is his daughter’s classmate, Peter Parker, he threatens Peter and his loved ones with death, as any threat to Toomes taking care of his own family is one he will go to extremes to stop.

Toomes also considers the government and Tony Stark his enemies, reasoning that they don’t care about the “little guys” like himself.

The Bird’s Buddies

After starting his own illicit business in dealing Chitauri-based arms, Toomes uses a crew mainly culled from his former employees during his more legitimate days. His chief inventor is Phineas Mason, also known as the Tinkerer, while Herman Schultz and Jackson Brice are two of Toomes’ former salvage employees turned criminal cohorts—though Brice is far less disciplined and loyal.

Toomes believes he had no other choice but to turn to a life of crime in order to support his beloved wife, Doris, and daughter, Liz. However, he refuses to involve his family in his less-than-savory business operations, keeping them unaware of how he truly makes money.

Business Goes Bad

Years after Toomes turned to a life of crime, his illegal weapons business was thriving, even as he kept the truth from his wife, Doris, and their teenage daughter, Liz, making up stories about “business trips” to cover for his time away. At the same time, Toomes’ actions fell onto the radar of local Queens hero Spider-Man, who had encountered bank robbers with unusually powerful weapons, and began to look for their source.

Soon after, Spider-Man happened upon an arms deal officiated by Toomes’ employee, Herman Schultz, after another associate, Jackson Brice—the self-proclaimed “Shocker”—fired off one of the weapons they were attempting to sell, attracting Spider-Man to the spot. When Spider-Man attempted to follow the fleeing men in their van, Toomes, wearing his exo-suit, came to their rescue and grabbed Spider-Man, flying him far up into the air. Spider-Man escaped Vulture’s grasp, however, by deploying a parachute.

Toomes returned to his base, furious with Brice for firing off the weapon in the first place, reiterating that they must move their weapons as quietly as possible, lest they attract more attention. He fired Brice from the operation, but Brice threatened to rat his boss out to the authorities. Wanting to intimidate Brice by using an anti-gravity device on him, Toomes accidentally picked up a far more lethal weapon and disintegrated his ex-employee. Though not his intention, Toomes wasn’t especially bothered by Brice’s death, giving Schultz Brice’s powerful Gauntlet and declaring Schultz was the new Shocker.

Toomes found himself thwarted once again by Spider-Man while attempting to intercept a shipment of valuable parts headed for Maryland. He managed to trap his enemy inside the shipment truck in order to escape, but didn’t get away with the duffel bag of items he was attempting to steal.

An arms deal with dangerous criminal Mac Gargan on the Staten Island Ferry was also interrupted when Spider-Man showed up, wanting to bring everyone involved, including Toomes, to justice. Though Gargan was incapacitated, Spider-Man’s plan backfired when Toomes donned his suit, splitting the boat in half during the confrontation that followed. Toomes and Schultz managed to escape before Iron Man arrived to save the boat and those onboard.

Tired of being thwarted so many times, Toomes planned one final heist that would leave him and his men set for life. The plan was to steal a massive Stark airplane shipment of technology while it was on route from the recently sold Avengers Tower to the Avengers’ new base in upstate New York.

The night the heist was meant to go down, Toomes greeted his daughter Liz’s date for homecoming, Peter Parker, offering to drive Liz and Peter to the dance. During the drive, recognizing Peter’s voice and putting two and two together about situations he’d been present for, Toomes realized that Peter was none other than Spider-Man. Under the pretense of wanting to give Peter the “dad talk,” he told Liz to go inside the school, before threatening to kill Peter and everyone he loves if he tried to stop him again. When the unrelenting Parker tracked Toomes to his lair, Toomes destroyed the support beams, causing the building to collapse and seemingly killing Spider-Man once and for all.

Toomes headed off to hijack Stark’s plane and found it stocked beyond his wildest dreams. However, he soon realized that Spider-Man was not dead and had stowed away on the plane with him. The two faced off again, with their fight leading to the destruction of one of the plane’s engines, causing the plane to crash on the beach at Coney Island. Toomes got the best of Parker when they fought on the beach and, still attempting to salvage some of the loot, was going to fly off with one of the crates from the plane—not realizing how badly his exo-suit had itself been damaged at this point, even as Parker tried to warn him. When the suit gave out completely and crashed itself in a fiery explosion, Parker ran into the blaze and saved Toomes’ life, before using his webbing to tie him up. Toomes was later found on the beach by the authorities, joined by Tony Stark employee Happy Hogan.

Toomes was arrested, and in the aftermath, asked Doris and Liz to move away, not wanting to put them through the burden of having to see him go through his trial. Locked up in the same prison where Mac Gargan had been incarcerated since the Staten Island Ferry deal had gone south, Toomes was approached by Gargan, who’d been left with scars from injuries sustained on the boat. Gargan said that he had heard Toomes knew Spider-Man’s real identity, and that he had people on the outside who would help him eliminate their common foe.

Adrian denied having this knowledge, stating that if he knew Spider-Man’s identity, Spider-Man would already be dead.