Plot Summary
By now the Vulture is suspicious that someone at the plant is the Prowler (he's not an evil genius for nothing), but before he is able to track him down Prowler busts in and there is a very short battle between him and Prowler where the Vulture literally flies rings around him, laughing at his ineffectualness. The Prowler's weapons are indeed ineffective against the Vulture, but our resourceful Hobie has souped up his jet boots and grabs the Vulture in a surprise burst of speed, and holds onto him as they both plummet back into the Vulture's office. Vulture almost kills Hobie, but Hobie manages to slow him with his sleep gas.
Nightcreeper, that persistent cuss, staggers back in again, (still in costume, though they had removed it at the hospital) looking for more weapons, and tries to attack the drugged Vulture who is still on his feet. Vulture, who is disoriented from the gas, leaves to clear his head. However, he can't return later as he planned; Hobie has recorded their entire conversation and hands the tape and the Vulture's identity over to the police; he wasn't able to physically beat him, but he defeated his plans to take over the company and rob it of its technology.
By the end of the story, Hobie feels like a failure as a hero but is reminded by his brother that he accomplished his aim of saving his company and getting rid of the Vulture. Nightcreeper is in hospital/jail (this time I hope they remembered to handcuff him to the bed as they do other hospitalized killers), and his wife reluctantly accepts that her husband is a suicidal vigilante at night. The best part is, Spiderman didn't have to deal with the bogus Vulture this time.
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Story Arc
The Darkest Hour
Read Part One First
Despite all of this, the series is pretty decent. It is understandable why it didn't get picked up as a regular series however; the character's background is just not made compelling enough, the supporting characters are not developed enough; it would have been interesting to see what Frank Miller would have done with the story. However, perhaps it is just as well he didn't; the Prowler as presented in this series has too many similarities to the Batman: Year One series.
It is worth reading the series if you want to get a glimpse at what the old spirit of Marvel used to feel like. It's a shame it didn't get picked up as a regular title; in the right hands, the Prowler could be an interesting continuing character, a poor man's Batman trying to survive in a world of Gods and superheroes of massive power. But it takes an unusual writer to write for a character like this convincingly, which is why we have the stories (and the never-ending clones, in more ways than one) we do from Marvel.
Five stars for effort, two for execution, which makes three and a half over all.
