The Vulture first soared into the Marvel Universe in The Amazing Spider-Man #2 (May 1963). Created by the legendary duo of writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko, the character was introduced with remarkable speed, appearing just one issue after Spider-Man's solo series began. This swift introduction cemented him as a cornerstone of the hero's burgeoning collection of nemeses. Lee and Ditko's creation reflected a common theme in their early collaborations: the intersection of science, age, and criminality. Unlike the monstrous Lizard or the otherworldly threats that would come later, Adrian Toomes was a grounded, human antagonist. He was an elderly man, a demographic rarely seen in super-villainy at the time, whose intellect was his greatest weapon. Ditko's design was instantly iconic: a stark green and black costume with a feathered ruff and massive, bird-like wings. The design conveyed both a thematic connection to his namesake and a sense of unnatural, mechanical menace. The Vulture was not born with powers; he built them, a testament to the idea that genius, when corrupted by bitterness, could be as dangerous as any cosmic ray or radioactive spider bite. His immediate success with readers led to his inclusion as a founding member of the Sinister Six in The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1 (1964), a move that solidified his status as an A-list threat.
Adrian Toomes was born in Staten Island, New York. A brilliant mind from a young age, he became a gifted electronics engineer and inventor. After his parents died, he was raised by his older brother, Marcus. His intelligence led him to co-found a small firm, Bestman and Toomes Electronics, with his business partner, Gregory Bestman. Toomes handled the inventions while Bestman managed the finances. The pinnacle of Toomes's work was the creation of an electromagnetic flight harness. This device used anti-graviton technology to allow the wearer to fly silently and with incredible maneuverability. It also, as a side effect, amplified the wearer's strength and, as later revealed, significantly increased their longevity. Toomes, ecstatic about his breakthrough, rushed to share the news with Bestman. He arrived to find that Bestman had been systematically embezzling funds from the company and was preparing to oust Toomes, seizing full control of the firm and its patents, including the harness. When Toomes confronted him, Bestman callously admitted to the betrayal. Enraged and physically overpowered by the younger Bestman, Toomes was fired from his own company. This profound betrayal shattered him, leaving him jobless and with no legal recourse. Secluding himself on a farm, Toomes refined the harness, adding a weaponized wing-suit and adopting the moniker of the Vulture. His motivation was twofold: revenge against Bestman and a desire to take from a world he felt had taken everything from him. His first public outing as the Vulture involved a dramatic series of high-stakes robberies that baffled the police and earned him significant media attention. This inevitably brought him into conflict with the newly-emerged hero, Spider-Man. Their first battle was a learning experience for the young hero; the Vulture's aerial superiority and surprising strength proved a difficult challenge. Spider-Man was eventually able to defeat Toomes by developing an anti-magnetic inverter to disable his flight harness, leading to the Vulture's first of many incarcerations. This established a pattern for their decades-long rivalry: Toomes's genius and experience clashing with Spider-Man's ingenuity and youthful determination. Over the years, the mantle of the Vulture has been briefly held by others.
Despite these usurpers, Adrian Toomes has always reclaimed his title, proving himself to be the one and true Vulture.
In the MCU (designated as Earth-199999), Adrian Toomes's origin is fundamentally reimagined, shifting from a story of corporate betrayal to one of blue-collar disenfranchisement. He is not a disgraced engineer but the owner of a successful New York salvage company. Following the devastating Chitauri invasion depicted in The Avengers (2012), Toomes and his crew secure a lucrative city contract to clean up the wreckage, including the vast amounts of alien technology littering Manhattan. This is a life-changing opportunity for his business and his employees. However, their work is abruptly halted by the U.S. Department of Damage Control (D.O.D.C.), a joint venture between the federal government and Stark Industries. The D.O.D.C. unilaterally seizes control of all alien salvage operations, effectively pushing Toomes and his small company out of business and leaving him in massive debt. Having already invested heavily in new equipment and personnel, Toomes is financially ruined. Feeling cheated by a system where billionaires like Tony Stark profit from a disaster while the “little guy” is crushed, a deeply embittered Toomes makes a fateful decision. He and his crew had already managed to spirit away a few truckloads of Chitauri technology before the D.O.D.C. lockdown. Instead of turning it in, they choose to go underground. With the help of his brilliant employee, Phineas Mason (the Tinkerer), Toomes's team begins reverse-engineering the alien tech. Over the next eight years, they build a sophisticated and highly illegal black market operation, crafting advanced hybrid weapons from the Chitauri scraps and selling them to criminals. To facilitate his heists of D.O.D.C. transports and other tech sources, Toomes personally uses a powerful exo-suit equipped with massive mechanical wings and razor-sharp talons, earning the underworld moniker “The Vulture.” His motivation is not world domination or petty revenge, but a pragmatic, albeit criminal, desire to provide for his family and his crew, whom he views as his extended family. This grounded motivation and his “blue-collar supervillain” status are defining characteristics, sharply distinguishing him from his comic book counterpart and making his eventual confrontation with Peter Parker in Spider-Man: Homecoming a deeply personal conflict rooted in class and perspective.
Adrian Toomes's threat level stems from a combination of his genius intellect and the advanced technology he created. He possesses no inherent superhuman abilities.
Toomes is defined by his arrogance and bitterness. He possesses a massive ego, believing his intellect places him above common people and laws. This is coupled with a deep-seated resentment for those he feels have stolen his success, starting with Gregory Bestman and later extending to figures like Spider-Man who thwart his “rightful” ambitions. He is utterly ruthless and willing to kill to achieve his goals, yet he is not without a strange, twisted code of honor. He has occasionally shown respect for Spider-Man's intellect and has a paternalistic, albeit often manipulative, relationship with other villains. His advanced age is a source of both pride and frustration; he revels in defeating younger, stronger opponents but despises the physical frailties that sometimes accompany it.
The MCU's Vulture is a technological powerhouse whose equipment is derived from scavenged alien and advanced Earth technology.
The MCU's Adrian Toomes is pragmatic, calculating, and driven by a fierce protective instinct for his family and crew. Unlike the comic version's grandstanding villainy, MCU Toomes is a reluctant criminal who sees his actions as a necessary evil. He is a family man who draws a strict line between his “work” and his home life. He is charismatic and commands the loyalty of his men, but he is also utterly ruthless when crossed. His warning to Peter Parker in the car—a calm, measured, and terrifying threat to kill him and everyone he loves if he interferes again—reveals a cold-blooded pragmatism beneath his working-class exterior. He holds a deep-seated grudge against the ultra-rich like Tony Stark, viewing them as hypocrites who create messes and then profit from the cleanup, leaving people like him behind. This grounded, relatable motivation makes him one of the MCU's most compelling villains.
As a dedicated criminal, the Vulture's “alliances” are almost always temporary and based on mutual self-interest. His longest-lasting partnerships have been within the context of super-villain teams.
The Vulture's debut storyline is a masterclass in establishing a new villain. Frustrated and vengeful, Adrian Toomes embarks on a series of daring thefts, using his flight harness to pluck payrolls from armored cars and jewels from penthouse apartments, leaving the police helpless. His crimes attract the attention of J. Jonah Jameson, who publishes sensational headlines that inadvertently build the Vulture's mystique. When Peter Parker tries to get photos, he is easily defeated in their first skirmish, as he has no way to combat an aerial foe. This initial failure is a crucial character beat for the young Spider-Man. Humbled, he retreats to his lab and uses his scientific knowledge to invent an anti-magnetic inverter. In their rematch, he attaches the device to the Vulture's harness, disabling his flight capabilities and bringing him crashing down. The story established the core dynamic of their rivalry: Toomes's technological superiority countered by Peter's superior scientific ingenuity.
In one of the most celebrated Sinister Six reunions, Doctor Octopus reassembles the team (with Hobgoblin replacing the deceased Kraven) for a grand scheme of world domination. The Vulture eagerly rejoins, his bitterness and greed as potent as ever. His role in the story is significant, participating in coordinated attacks and showcasing his veteran cunning. He battles Spider-Man over the skies of New York and plays a key part in the team's initial successes. The storyline highlights the dysfunctional-but-deadly dynamic of the Six, and Vulture's part in it underscores his status as an elder statesman of villainy, still dangerous and respected even among a team of alpha predators.
This dark and brutal storyline redefined the Vulture for the modern era. He finds himself embroiled in a mob war, leading a group of henchmen. However, his life takes a horrific turn when he is targeted by the family of Kraven the Hunter. As part of a ritualistic “hunt” of spider-themed heroes and villains to prepare for Kraven's resurrection, he is mercilessly beaten and left for dead by Alyosha Kravinoff. Later, a desperate and broken Toomes is hunted by the new, monstrous Jimmy Natale Vulture. The story culminates in a savage confrontation where Toomes, despite his age and injuries, uses his sheer cunning to kill Natale. This arc stripped away the character's Silver Age campiness, portraying him as a tough, grizzled survivor forced into extreme violence, showing the terrifying lethality that lay beneath his elderly exterior. It was a visceral reminder that Adrian Toomes is, at his core, a predator.
The Vulture's cinematic debut is arguably his most significant story in any medium. The film reinvents him as Adrian Toomes, a salvage operator whose livelihood is destroyed by Tony Stark's Damage Control. This act radicalizes him, turning him into an illegal arms dealer specializing in alien technology. The story brilliantly frames him not as a cackling villain but as a protective father and crew boss, a man pushed to extremes by an unjust system. His conflict with Peter Parker becomes intensely personal when Peter discovers Toomes is the father of his date, Liz. The resulting car scene is one of the most tense, non-action sequences in the entire MCU, as Toomes calmly deduces Peter's secret identity and threatens him. The final battle, where Spider-Man saves Toomes from his malfunctioning suit, and Toomes's subsequent refusal to reveal Spider-Man's identity in prison, provides a complex and satisfying arc for one of the MCU's best villains.