One of the reasons why there are almost no Spider-Man villains in the villain origins retrospective is that most of them debut too close to the classic version.
There is however one that has an incredibly weird debut, and I’ve deliberately saved him for Halloween.
Well, I actually came out with the idea last week, but I can always claim that I planned everything from the start once it’s done. I’m sure this won’t be thematically significant later in this review.
Amazing Spider-Man #14 (1964)
by Stan Lee & Steve Ditko
Not only this is the debut of the Green Goblin, but it’s also the first time Spider-Man meets the Hulk!
Why is the Hulk there? It’s easy to forget, but the Hulk was initially kind of a flop: his first volume only lasted six issues before cancellation.
But Lee and Kirby were fond of the character, so he made tons of appearances… most notably on Fantastic Four and of course Avengers. This is actually his LAST appearance before moving to Tales to Astonish, where after an issue where he guest-stars against Giant Man he will be given his own regular serial.
His appearance on the cover, plus the Enforcers, makes the cover a bit too crowded… perhaps they should’ve gone with the teaser page instead.
Although we would’ve missed a classic Stan Lee disclaimer on the teaser page.
This kind of metatextual joking can get a bit too cheesy, but for the most part I think Stan makes it work.
The first actual panel shows us the Green Goblin in the shadows. This only one of the TWO panels in the entire story where he’s not wearing the mask, but don’t expect to see Norman Osborn: his real identity won’t be revealed until issue 39, a whole 2 years later.
Also don’t expect to see his trademark Goblin Glider™: he starts off with the MUCH goofier Flying Broomstick(patent pending).
It arguably fits the tone, but he looks absolutely ridiculous on that thing!!! Not that he doesn’t look ridiculous on the glider, but you know what I mean.
As promised by the cover, the other villains of the story are the Enforcers.
Which if you’re unfamiliar with them are a trio consisting of a tall guy who has a rope, a short guy who knows karate, and a buff guy who is strong (ranging from regular guy strong to mildly superhumanly strong).
Lee & Ditko really seem to like these guys, because they show up A LOT in early Spider-Man. And I’m including Ditko because, by the time John Romita takes over as the regular artist, the Enforces have long disappeared. Admittedly Stan might have grown bored with them.
They’re fine with the 60s vibe, but I’ve never found them particularly threatening… weirdly enough, the only time I thought they were scary was an issue of Dazzler.
The Green Goblin shows up to recruit them. And apparently he can’t count, because he addresses them as “the four of you” while there are only three Enforcers.
Notice his mask: plenty of artists draw him with huge ears, but only Steve Ditko gives him those distinctive eyelashes.
Completing the setup for the story is an over-the-top movie producer.
He’s completely nuts, but he managed to get an Oscar for a horror movie in 1964 so he must know SOMETHING about movies.
Especially if he means that he won Best Picture, because the first horror movie to do that was “The Silence Of The Lambs” in 1991. Unless he means a different award, since there was a Mr. Hyde movie that won Best Actor already in 1931.
I’ve heard of movie producers having dumber ideas than this.
I need to remind you that this is the first plan of the Green Goblin.
The nemesis of Marvel’s flagship character, the man who will one day be the big bad of the entire Marvel Universe for a couple of years… and his FIRST plan is luring Spider-Man into making a movie.
Comics, everybody!
Speaking of our future movie star, he’s busy with his usual high school shenanigans.
You have to love the 60s: a guy flying around the city on a broomstick is enough to issue a public service announcement to keep the people calm.
Forget the Marvel Universe where the skies must be filled with flying people… in OUR universe this wouldn’t qualify for a security warning!
And there you have it: the very first meeting between Spider-Man and Green Goblin. Because of this, this panel is sometimes part of flashbacks.
And it really shows how awkward the broomstick looks when compared to the Goblin Glider™, because how the heck is he not falling!?
You might expect a fight to break out, but… nope!!!
The offer is legit, with Spider-Man being offered 50,000 dollars for the movie. This would be 496,433 dollars in 2023!
Not a bad offer, although by comparison Tobey Maguire was paid 4 million dollars to play Spider-Man in 2002 (that’s 6.84 millions in 2023).
Spider-Man isn’t particularly worried about how he’s going to be paid, which is a little weird considering his first story pointed out that he can’t pe paid with a check! Maybe he wants to be paid in cash?
Fortunately Peter Parker is the only person legally allowed to take pictures of Spider-Man, so he’s sent along for the ride.
A little too convenient for the plot, perhaps, but I buy it: JJJ could send another photographer, sure, but he would likely have to pay him more than he pays Peter.
Getting past Aunt May is a bit trickier, but even if she looks roughly 120 years old here she still has some common sense.
Notice he says he’ll soon be ready for college: he’s exactly halfway through finishing high school, since he will graduate in issue 28.
We then move to the West Coast, where Green Goblin unleashes his trap. And if you thought he was going to be the main threat, think again!
Even this far back, I still have trouble believing that the Enforcers are giving Spider-Man any trouble.
In fact, they don’t.
Green Goblin is a bit trickier. Notice he’s not using Pumpkin Bombs™ yet.
This fight is taking place in the desert (just go with it), so Spider-Man uses this to his advantage and sneak away.
This is so that the fight can continue inside a conveniently nearby cave.
Joke’s on them, this is where Spidey does his best Batman impression.
The broomstick does have ONE advantage over the glider: Green Goblin can use it to burn through Spider-Man’s webs. Considering he will get gloves that shoot energy blasts, this will be soon redundant.
At this point you might have forgotten that the Hulk is in this!
What’s hilarious is that this is COMPLETELY unexpected for Green Goblin!!!
Spider-Man puts up a remarkable fight…
…but IT’S THE HULK.
At least Spider-Man has not forgotten that he’s supposed to fight the Green Goblin.
But the Green Goblin gets away, and Spider-Man takes the wise decision to stop fighting the Hulk and just leave with the knocked out Enforcers.
Honestly this would’ve been more entertaining than the actual first Hulk movie.
Hollywood studios, messing with actors since way before 1964.
And so we end with the second and last panel where the Green Goblin is not wearing his mask.
Getting this out of the way: Green Goblin owes A LOT to Steve Ditko, even more than other characters created in the era.
Stan Lee clearly wasn’t giving too much thought to the character for this story.
Stan’s synopsis for the Green Goblin had a movie crew, on location, finding an Egyptian-like sarcophagus. Inside was an ancient, mythological demon, the Green Goblin. He naturally came to life. On my own, I changed Stan’s mythological demon into a human villain.
STEVE DITKO
So an argument can be made that the Green Goblin OF THIS ISSUE was mostly created by Steve Ditko. In fact I agree with that argument!
But don’t even try to argue that Ditko is solely responsible for his later development. Especially considering the entire part of the mythos where he knows Spider-Man’s identity was entirely in the Romita era where Ditko had no part whatsoever.
I should point out, however, that Ditko’s claim sounds a bit far-fetched to me: there is NOTHING supernatural on Amazing Spider-Man throughout the Lee/Ditko run, so Stan Lee introducing a real demon feels off. Not entirely impossible, of course, since Stan WOULD sometimes put something completely bonkers in a series… but he tended to be more restrained on Spider-Man.
The “Ditko did everything” superfans are nowhere near as annoying as the Kirby ones, but just to be clear: find me one story written exclusively by Steve Ditko where he creates a complex and interesting supervillain and then we’ll talk.
Historical significance: 7/10
First meeting between Spider-Man and Hulk, but the first meeting with Green Goblin is not THAT important… you can basically skip this. Issue 17 is mostly the introduction of the Green Goblin as we know him (see below).
Silver Age-ness: 8/10
On the Marvel scale, this is the epitome of zaniness for the era.
Does it stand the test of time? 4/10
Ooof. What a mess. Which is painful because Lee & Ditko were ON FIRE in this period, but… this is just a mishmash of too many ideas that don’t work together. AT ALL.
Spider-Man’s strengths are his struggles that mimic real life or his actual civilian life, and we have basically none of either here. Yeah he’s taking the job because he needs money, which is a Spider-Man staple, but the entire scenario is way too far-fetched.
Also Green Goblin, while having a memorable design (albeit still a work-in-progress), really didn’t impress me here. The idea of having a villain whose identity is unknown to both the readers and the hero is novel, sure, but it’s little more than a footnote this time around.
How close is this to the modern character? 4/10
Sure the mask is there, but everything else? He’s just a generic mob wannabe with weird gimmicks.
By contrast, his second appearance in Amazing Spider-Man #17 is MUCH more refined!
That’s where he gets the glider and the pumpkin bombs.
That’s where he uses the far more obscure Goblin Surprise™ against the Human Torch, which I mention because I’ve always thought Green Goblin could use more gadgets than just the pumpkin bombs and the razor bats.
Norman Osborn doesn’t even show up until the Green Goblin’s third appearance in issue 23, although he’s not exactly a huge role: he’s not even named!!! You could spot that haircut anywhere.
Osborn shows up again in issue 25, which I’m bringing up to dispute the claims that Ditko always intended for him to be Green Goblin and putting him only in stories with the Green Goblin as a clue… because there is NO Green Goblin in Amazing Spider-Man #25.
We would not learn that this guy was named Norman Osborn until Amazing Spider-Man #37, which is also when we discover he’s the father of Peter Parker’s schoolmate (not yet his friend) Harry Osborn, who himself debuted only in issue #31.
That was the next-to-last Ditko story. Then there’s Amazing Spider-Man #39: the first Romita story, where we learn Green Goblin is Osborn, and the story when he discovers Spider-Man’s identity.
By that point, “Who is the Green Goblin?” was the big mystery of the series.
According to Stan Lee, one of the creative differences he had with Ditko was precisely over the identity of Green Goblin.
Steve wanted him to turn out to be just some character that we had never seen before. Because, he said, in real life, very often a villain turns out to be somebody that you never knew. And I felt that that would be wrong. I felt, in a sense, it would be like cheating the reader. … if it’s somebody you didn’t know and had never seen, then what was the point of following all the clues? I think that frustrates the reader.
STAN LEE
Stan Lee’s anecdotes are notoriously tricky because he tended to give different explanations for the same thing over the years, blaming bad memory. In fact, he also said in a different occasion the “Ditko wanted the guy to be an unknown” thing might have been related to a different villain.
But I don’t have the source for that quote before me, so I’m going by memory… kind of like Stan Lee, but I’m admitting it.
The other account we have is from Romita.
And I hope nobody has a grudge against Romita Senior because by all accounts he was one of the most wholesome people in the industry.
Stan wouldn’t have been able to stand it if Ditko did the story and didn’t reveal that the Green Goblin was Norman Osborn. I didn’t know there was any doubt about Osborn being the Goblin. I didn’t know that Ditko had just been setting Osborn up as a straw dog. I just accepted the fact that it was going to be Norman Osborn when we plotted it. I had been following the last couple of issues and didn’t think there was really much mystery about it. Looking back, I doubt the Goblin’s identity would have been revealed in Amazing #39 if Ditko had stayed on.
JOHN ROMITA SENIOR
Now… I know the position of “Stan Lee was a scumbag and Kirby/Ditko were saints who could do no wrong” narrative is often fashionable.
But I find Stan’s version more believable than Ditko’s here.
The idea of “the bad guy is an unknown” had already been used in the series AT LEAST with Electro and DEFINITELY with Crimemaster! The latter is particularly significant because Green Goblin had an important storyline with Crimemaster.
And we know Ditko was really fond of repeating the same story beat if he attached some kind of moral to it (source: have you read any story Ditko wrote?).
To believe Ditko’s version you would have to believe that he planted Norman Osborn in random scenes because he knew THAT far in advance his identity.
If you know ANYTHING about Steve Ditko, would THAT be more believable than the fact that he was really fixated on an idea and pushed to put it in the story no matter what?
Plus… I’m sorry, Ditko was undeniably a legend and one of the best comic book artists who ever lived but he wasn’t THAT good of a writer.