This is "Provide Some Answers," which is a feature where long unresolved plot points are eventually resolved.

Today, based on a suggestion from my pal Tom A., we look at how Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale resolved a nearly 40-year-old Vulture...if not MYSTERY, pretty close to a mystery.

I just recently wrote about the time that Stan Lee and John Romita decided to kill off the original Vulture and replace him with a new, younger version of the villain. They then quickly changed their mind and revealed that, "Whoops, did we say that the Vulture died? Nope, he didn't die. He just got better."

Here's the original death scene from Amazing Spider-Man #48...

Vulture had suffered an accident and since he is on his death bed, he decides to let his only friend in prison, Blackie Drago in on where he has hidden his wings...

Of course, Blackie is a jerk and actually planned the whole thing to get close to the Vulture and then have him killed.

Blackie took over as the new Vulture, now with a new (cool?) helmet...

When the original Vulture returned 15 issues later, it was as simple as, "Oh yeah, I never did die"...

That was the only explanation that we had for pretty much 40 years until Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale re-visited this era in Spider-Man history in their classic 2002 miniseries, Spider-Man: Blue.

In Spider-Man: Blue #4, we see a different version of the Vulture's "death"...

We see that Blackie was working with a partner who poisoned the original Vulture and helped Blackie escape, so that Blackie could destroy Spider-Man...

Blackie failed, of course, as he's Blackie Drago and Spider-Man is, well, Spider-Man.

So in the next issue, the mysterious partner of Blackie visits Vulture in the hospital and gives him an antidote to the original poison....

Soon, the Vulture is flying the not-so-friendly skies once more!

Now who was that mysterious benefactor (well, he wasn't always a benefactor, but you know what I mean)?

None other than Kraven the Hunter!

That was a very clever way by Loeb and Sale to work in the old Vulture stories into their look at Spider-Man's past while also coming up with a retroactive explanation for the Vulture's sudden turn away from death's door that was more detailed than "I was too angry to die."

Thanks to Tom for the suggestion!

If anyone else has a suggestion for a comic book plot that got resolved after a few years (I tend to use two years as the minimum, as otherwise, you're probably just in the middle of the actual initial reveal of the storyline, ya know? But I'll allow exceptions where a new writer takes over a storyline and has to resolve the previous writer's unresolved plots), drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!