Adrian Toomes is the former business owner of the Toomes Salvage Company, based in New York, who was forced into turning to a life of crime after his business was forced to revaluate after the coming of Damage Control's alliance with Iron Man Recruiting his employees and being equipped with an eco-suit created by the Tinkerer from alien technology which reassembled a vulture, Toomes spent years stealing advanced weapons and selling them to criminals. His groups activities were discovered by Spider Man, which brought him into conflict with the vigilante until he learned Spider Man was his daughters boyfriend Peter. After an attempt to hijack a plane full of Avengers tech, he was soon thwarted by Peter and was sent to jail for his crimes.
Biography[]
Birth of an Enterprise[]
Adrian Toomes used to run his own salvaging company dubbed Toomes Salvage Company. After the battle between the Avengers and the Chitauri in New York City, his company was tasked by the city council to collect and salvage the remains of the alien ships and technology scattered around the city. However, before Toomes and his crew could complete the job, he lost the contract to Tony Stark, who had recently purchased Damage Control. Faced with potential bankruptcy since he had already purchased extra trucks and hired extra employers for the task, Toomes decided to keep the Chitauri tech he had already salvaged for himself rather than turning it over to Damage Control. In the eight years that followed, Toomes build up a fortune by stealing high tech gear from Damage Control, making weapons out of them, and selling them to criminals. He was able to get away with this for so long by making sure he stayed well under the radar of the Avengers and the federal government. For his operations, Toomes had the Tinkerer build his exo-suit consisting of two huge mechanical wings.
Encountering Spider-Man[]
Things turned sour when two of his employees, Herman Schultz and Jackson Brice, accidently attracted the attention of the young Spider-Man while trying to sell some of Toomes' weapons. Toomes was forced to interfere to prevent Spider-Man from capturing Herman and Jackson, and dropped the hero in a lake. Afterwards, he fired Jackson from his team because of his recklessness, and accidently killed him when Jackson threatened to reveal Toomes' secret to his wife Doris. Toomes got into another fight with Spider-Man when the hero tried to prevent him from robbing a Damage Control truck in Washington DC. Toomes was able to trap Spider-Man in the truck. Later that day, Spider-Man saved Toomes' daughter Liz when she and her classmates got trapped in the elevator of the Washington Monument due to an explosion caused by an unstable Chitauri grenade. A third battle between Toomes and Spider-Man followed when Peter tried to catch the villain during an arms trade with Mac Gargan on board the Staten Island Ferry. Although Mac was caught, Toomes got away again when a malfunctioning weapon teared the ferry in half, forcing Spider-Man and Iron Man to save the ferry first. With both Iron Man and the FBI now being aware of his arms dealing, Toomes, along with Herman and Phineas Mason, decided to make one final heist before retiring.
His plan was to hijack a Damage Control plane transporting weapons from Avengers Tower to the team's new headquarters. Meanwhile, Toomes daughter Liz asked Peter Parker to the homecomming dance at their high school. While taking the teens to the school in his car, Toomes realized Peter was in fact Spider-Man. He confronted Peter with this knowledge, but gave him one last chance to stop interfering with his plans, threatening to kill him if he refused. Peter in turn realized Toomes plan to hijack the plane, and decided to stop him anyway. After first defeating Herman, who was waiting for Peter outside the school on Toomes' orders, Peter confronted Toomes in his lair. Toomes used his suit to destroy the buildings' support beams and make the roof collapse on top of Peter. Peter managed to free himself from the rubble and continued to fight Toomes on board the plane, steering it to crash on the beach near Coney Island. There, Peter and Toomes engaged in a final battle, which ended with Toomes suit getting damaged and exploding. Peter saved Toomes from the wreckage however and left him on the beach for the police to find. After his arrest, Toomes was send to prison where he once again encountered Mac. Despite Mac's offer to team up against Spider-Man, Toomes decided to keep his knowledge about Spider-Mans' true identity to himself for now.
Equipment[]
Armor[]
- Vulture Exo-Suit: After Adrian Toomes secured a load of Chitauri technology recovered from the Battle of New York, he had the Tinkerer build him a suit and had a flight harness fashioned from it. In essence it was a wearable drone, able to operate remotely under Toomes's command, and yet also had the capability to clamp onto him and maintain enough lift to bear him aloft with a considerable amount of additional weight. The wing assemblage was capable of vertical take off and landing by way of a pair of gimbal mounted rotors, and the material structure could slice through solid steel. Later modifications to Toomes's wings included an exoskeleton incorporating taloned feet with considerable gripping power and a high altitude seal that allowed the wings to clamp together to form an air pocket when the entire apparatus was clamped to the side of an unyielding structure.