People seem surprised to learn proto-goblin is a thing so here's a storytime for that. Full disclosure: it's not a good story. This is your only warning.
>What are the dreaded secrets of Norman Osborn?
Too many.
>Where will the clues lead the stalwart Stacy brothers?
Quite the puzzler.
>And how will it affect the life of young Peter Parker?
Maybe now that JMD is involved, it actually will.
Spiderphiles is not a dirty word by itself, but I have a filthy mind and the maturity of a 12-year-old, so it always takes me out of the story when I read it. My apologies to Lee. Let's Skip to the next page.
>pigtail Gwen sighted.
>it's funny because her daddy's a pig
>...I'll show myself out.
George the mutant denyer is going to feel like a complete idiot in a month or so. It's weird to think anything might have been more or less normal for the Marvel population at one point
Today in dated scenes that could hit differently but surprisingly hold up:
>Both men have pagers.
Then:
>Modern men. Next scene.
Now:
>Do people still use pagers?
>over 2 million pagers in use today (as of 2024).
>mostly used by doctors and law enforcement
> Huh. I guess it still checks out.
>these two probably have their phones turned off for a family get-together, and the pagers are for absolute emergencies.
You know Karen is fabulously wealthy when he tells the cops to frick off until he can speak to their manager, and they actually listen.-
George and Norman's friendship is criminally underutilized, and it's a crying shame. It's obvious why we've never seen much of it since George died before his daughter. That shouldn't mean we can't have any references to him at all. Especially when Osborn's hallucinating the dead cop's daughter. Hallucinate George too, you coward.
>sibling rivalry
>Oh no, the girls are fighting.
I am curious how many years George and Arthur have had over Norman. If Osborn is as old as them, the years hit them like a train, and Norman hit the age-defying jackpot.
Confirmation that Arthur would be one of the first to die in a horror movie. Everyone knows you only split up if you want the slasher to kill you.
*proto-goblin bursts through a brick wall like the Koolaid man*
I'm reminded of that Dark Spider-Gwen book published last year. You died to one bullet with the same weapon from which your predecessor took several! Proto-goblin and 616 Osborn are sharing a chuckle at your weak ass durability, Alternate Universe Norman.
The dude wearing the smiley face t-shirt has the most 90s hair ever.
>Norman's Peter-stalking abilities are not yet fully developed, but they're still impressive in their infancy.
>Run four eyes. Run.
>The Parker family, probably: Oh, this guy is so nice!
>Reality: The average person walks past 36 murderers in their lifetime; here's how to spot them.
Technically, we have reached the point where Norman is right on both counts. As his real self, they're fierce competitors. As his brainwashed self, they are kind of friends. It's strange to think about, I won't lie.
I feel sorry for this poor bartender. How is he supposed to use the cops as a threat and lay down some authority when Officer Friendly is the one acting unwise?
I guess there's technically a difference between defalcation (misappropriation of funds) and embezzlement (misappropriation of funds + cooking the books), but it's funny and IC to see Norman pat himself on the back for Stromm fricking up.
Sure, Norman. If you had injected your human test subject with your wienertail and it had been successful, you would have taken full credit. But when your serum turns your assistant into a horrible goblin man, you both share equal culpability. Dick.
>it's sort of interesting to me that, when the serum is created by Norman, it turns people into monsters.
>Ex: Proto-Goblin, Menace, and Monster.
>it's also neat to know he hasn't given up improving his project after discovering Stromm's serum.
>You really should have forged that termination document, Norman.
Arthur is lucky he wasn't dealing with a powerless Osborn with Pre Sinless modern Norman's personality, or our blonde protagonist would have been defenestrated with extreme prejudice.
>England
Breaks into a corporate office, can still find a job in another first world country, and faces no legal issues. Absolute chad behavior. Destiny awaits you, Arthur. You need to be there for when Gwen leaves the big apple after your brother's death.
>Better blondes than you have tried, hot stuff.
It's time to play a question game. Did Norman actually bribe those teenage hooligans, or was it genuinely a bit of suspiciously timed but unrelated gangland activity?
Credit where it's due; Norman changed those locks pretty darn fast. If your former chief of security turns into an unwanted snooper sneaking into your office, it's only logical to impede him. Trespassing by shooting up the door for a private business makes for one heck of an awkward conversation with one's brother.
>Norman Osborn
>Builds orphanages
In more ways than one, George.
>Norman Osborn is a good man.
>I've had him to my house for dinner.
I swear, George is near Sentry levels of deluded in this book.
I'm guessing George saw the future.
>Norman: has completely lost control over the situation.
>Also Norman: is desperately pretending he hasn't completely lost control over the situation.
Norman's life in a nutshell.
>Norman about to get Frankensteined by his monster.
George seems to genuinely care about Norman. If he'd just let Arthur step to the side, the lives of so many people would have been changed for the better, but he truly believes the best in his friend. It's a bit depressing rereading this and knowing what the green goblin will do to the daughter he loved so much.
Truly a man ahead of his times.
>Million dollar question: Did Norman care about George at all?
And the evil is defeated by a single football maneuver with no help from anyone but our intrepid duo, while the main character's arch enemy, who started this mess, hides behind a desk!
>And how will it affect the life of young Peter Parker? This feels a bit like one of those multi-page clickbait articles where readers have to skip to the very end to read one sentence about what they actually want to read about. The answer is on the next page.
>Norman when speaking to George: Baby boy. Baby.
>Norman when speaking to Arthur: Evil
Gee, Norman. I wonder why George thinks you're a good guy, albeit a little high-strung, and Arthur thinks you're a psycho when you're smirking at him after someone you supposedly tried to help seems to have died.
>formula found
>Peter's life forever changed.
>even though Norman was already experimenting on hapless employees, turning them into bullet resistant bloodthirsty mutates, and setting himself up as a villain.
And there's still the loose end of Van Adder.
>aggrieved sigh.
Yup.
Fricker's still mutating and it's been about 20 years in universe.
I guess that could suggest that Van Adder has the potential to gain new powers and abilities. I wonder if he'll survive JMD's Mini alive, and if he does, what role it would entail for him.
Given how Van Adder was mutating he’s probably a mindless beast at this point.
He's totally getting mercy killed by JMD if so
I honestly wonder how much of a fight he’ll give Pete.
given his role in this book? I'd say he'd probably be similar to Vermin, completely feral and insanely strong.
And whatever powers he has after 20 years of mutation.
Assumably given he has a prototype goblin formula in him
>regeneration
>super strength
>super agility
>bulletproof or above durability
Are baseline.
If Peter pulls any football moves on him, it's over.
I mean it's Modern Marvel Comics.
He's going to flirt with whichever non-MJ date Peter has that day and say Miles is the better Spider-Man?
Anyway, that's all. Not much but here's the background to whatever JMD's doing.
Crazy that Oliver Queen was canon to Marvel this whole time
>the very near future
>20 years later.......
It's technically the near future! In a geological time sense, anyway.
Norman sold Harry's soul to Mephisto for financial success so I'm guessing he didn't care at all.
Christ this dialogue feels robotic as hell.
Tis the 'joy' of Mackie writing, dear anon
That's Howard "Had to take pseudonym because his reputation get that bad" Mackie for you. There's a reason his most famous work is Ghost Rider.
There'd just be other troubles.
Also Norman's life: Losing my fricking mind.
It just wouldn't be Norman if he wasn't losing something.
Or killing a puppy.
>Kill a puppy
A young man is walking through a small village one day and decides to stop by a bar and have a beer. He walks into a bar, and sees a grizzled old man, crying into his beer. Curious, the young man sits down and says, "Hey old timer, why the long face?"
The old man looks at him and points out the window, "See that dock out there? I built that dock with my own two hands, plank by plank, nail by nail, but do they call me McGregor the dockbuilder? No, no."
The old man continued, "And see that ship out there? I've been fishing these waters for my village for thirty-five years! But do they call me McGregor the fisherman? No, no."
The old man continued, "And see all the crops in the farms out there? I planted and have been farming those crops for my village for nearly 45 years! But do they call me McGregor the farmer? No, no."
The old man starts to cry again, "But you frick one goat..."
Norman: I was seven years old! You club one dog to death in this country..
Saw this on my dashboard and thought of this thread.
Pfft.
What do you need helium for, Norman? Are you going to do a silly voice as Green Goblin?
>Helium is an inhalant or a volatile gas that produces a vapor that can get the individual high if inhaled. After it's inhaled and absorbed by the lungs, the effects of an inhalant can be felt within seconds, making the individual feel excited or happy, similar to feeling drunk
He'd better be careful with the dosage. I don't know if he'd survive the embarrassment of getting high on helium.
he's so cute, I want to make him worse <3
That'd be quite the challenge.
I mean, there would be one thing you could do to make Norman be considered the absolute worst, but that involves rape and that's honestly a character killer as well (even more so than selling one's soul/child's soul to the devil)
It is interesting how rape is the ultimate evil, worse than all other sins combined.
Yeah, rape would pretty much make him an unusable jobber.
Depends on the type of rape, tbh. There's obvious rape. Then there's shape shifting/body swap rape. The more covert it is, the more likely it will be that it flies under the radar.
"Yes."
design is more in line with the ultimate universe green goblin.
While true, this book was published in 1997 and Ultimate Norman doesn't appear until 2000. 616 Norman was transforming people before Bendis decided he preferred that over the classic green goblin.
Amazing friends did it first
Correct!
Honestly, I'm just tired of everyone assuming Ultimate Spider-Man did the transformation thing first.
Yeah both the 80s cartoons had Norman literally turn green when the Goblin persona took over
If Stromm hadn't died in Spencer's run, they could have done a storyline in homage to ASM #37 where he comes after Norman and sinless Norman has to contend with the fact that even if he's a supervillain now, Norman really did utterly screw him to hell and back.
There's so much more that could be done, should be done, NEEDS to be done, with Good Norman before they end it. It's such a waste that they're ending it without really doing much with him outside of that one mini, everywhere else he's just been a supporting character who gets beat up a lot.
But it must be said, Stromm dug his own grave, Norman just helped push him into it. Then tried to kill him, then dug him out of his grave, turned him into a cyborg lackey then tried to kill him again
Pushing him into it and everything after does make a bit of a difference.
Originally the most that can be said is Norman refused to forgive a crime that was committed by Stromm for selfish reasons. Personally, I'm of the opinion Stromm deserved what he got until the scientist's first appearance in ASM. Afterwards, yeah, Norman has treated that man horrifically.
Originally originally Norman just stole the his inventions, and when Stromm protested Norman railroaded him to jail.
Even in the Osborn's first retcon, it's written in a way that implies Norman was waiting for the opportunity to have him out.
This also applies to ASM. Norman was severely injured by Hobgoblin, who also dropped a building on him. Otto then used Osborn's newfound vulnerability to Peter's puppy dog eyes to his advantage, feeding a Trojan horse into the building and through Norman's armor to harm him.
Heroism doesn't appear to mean anything to Wells. Other authors appear to have protagonist syndrome or believe that this is a perfect chance to practice using the green goblin as target practice without requiring him to put up much of a fight.
>A lot of kids just don't get it, sir
I hope Harry was actually standing about 2 meters away and so when they met in college it was
>Ugh no, not that guy again.
>Harry, circa ASM #39: *remembers May and Ben and thinks they're the parents Peter lost, obviously he's only right about Ben*
>Harry: *recalls his animosity against Peter, who had two proud parents who clearly loved him, while Harry only had one father who never showed Harry the five seconds of admiration he gave Peter*
>Harry: ...Holy cannoli, all these years I've been beefing with an orphan. I'm the worst person EVER.
>Flashforward to Spider-man fighting Harry as the Green Goblin accusing Peter of having stolen his family out of envy. >Peter recalls:
>"Try to look at it this way, it can always be worse! For instance take me, I don't ever remember even having a father!
>Peter: fuuuuuuu-
Accidental self-sabotage, they name is Peter Parker.
>I hear you're quite the scientist. You know I'm something of a scientist myself.
Anon, whether the writer intended it or not, we all know that AU Norman recovered shortly afterwards.
I assume the writer missed the healing abilities in addition to the bullet resistance and meant for Norman to stay dead, given the disregard shown to 616 canon in the soulless nostalgic cash grab th at Dark Spider-Gwen. When you give continuity some thought, the myriad collection of writing errors proves to be inadvertently hilarious.
The funniest inadvertent part is, that Harry missing Peter's funeral and being away for days implies that he still had his overdose and schizophrenic breakdown, that in the original timeline lasted untill he got carted off after the Goblin story.
So implicitly, Gwen unknowingly dragged her friend undergoing an episode of prolonged psychosis into a murder scheme against his dad.
The writer was so busy teleporting us from point A to point C that they neglected essential point B. Ironically enough, psychologically exploring a grieving Gwen working with a destabilized Harry would be a far better product than what they gave us. We lose so many important characterizations when Marvel presents us with the comic book equivalent of mashing action figures together.
>"You heavily armed and armored men take this one single guy back. Me and my brother, armed only with pistols and trenchcoats, will handle this!"
Listen here man. The more armor you wear, the more likely you are to die. The Stacy brothers would have defeated proto-goblin then and there if they had been wearing nothing but a thong.
>Why'd you kill my daughter Norman?!"
He needs to hallucinate way more people. I demand deep and obscure cuts. I want to see everyone he's ever harmed negging the crap out of him.
His abusive drunk dad calling him a failure.
I'll take it. Maybe we'd finally get more background information on his parents. His mother is still unnamed.
Anon, we still need to see Norman get Ghost Gwen pregnant somehow. THEN we can move on to ghosts of everyone he's ever wronged showing up.
Frick. Young Norman should be illegal.
Can anyone edit the speech bubble out of that one panel of happy Norman?
That can't be real.
I'm not great at editing but I think you were asking for this?
tfw I tried (not very hard) to fit "the blonde is gaping" in the speech bubble, but gave up. Should've went with a normal font instead of using the regular cropped text
I meant without the speech bubble at all, not sure if that's even possible, but thanks for this.
maybe the general drawthread can help? I think they can offer a hand in editing stuff as well, since there's so general for that
To risk summoning the thing, I'll aways find the excuse that they wanted to connect Gwen and Norman to justify his targeting of her, when he was friends with her dad and she's the childhood friend of his son. Hell part of the breakdown was that he blamed Harry's friends for corrupting him, and Gwen was actively prodding around trying to help him.
There's at least one issue back then that it clear Norman saw Gwen, Peter and MJ as "Harry's friend Gwen, and her other friends".
Right, Peter and MJ are noted for giving Harry abandonment issues despite being his roommate and his gf respectively, meanwhile despite drifting apart recently, Gwen is the one calling Peter when he overdosed, visiting him when bedridden and trying to find out what went wrong.
MJ and Harry were really not in a good place mentally to be dating anyone let alone someone that would trigger their pre-existent psychological issues.
Holy chad Norman, that jawline mogs hard.
insane gigachad face. No wonder he was disappointed in Harry
at least Gabe (rip) got that jawline as well. Well, whenever he was drawn looking like Norman, that is
Norman- solidly built like a boxer and classically attractive in the conventional sense.
Harry- naked mole rat(affectionate)
Do we blame Emily or Amberson?
considering Gabe and Sarah looked alright, I'd say it came from Emily's side. Maybe her Pa was a naked mole rat as well.
Amberson contributed trauma, addiction, and a desire with making the kids grow an unhealthy obsession with Goblins
Also blowing the original Osborn fortune on bad investments.
>Amberson inherits a very tidy fortune
>but he's an alcoholic who likes to gamble
>loses fortune
>dies
>son has to rebuild it from scratch
for the HACKS at Marvel I offer a fun new storyline, never done before:
>Amberson inherits a very tidy fortune
>he somehow knows his son will grow up to be the Green Goblin (never answer how he knows it)
>a guy called M. E. Fisto comes up to him and says he has a solution to his problem
>reveals himself to be... MEPHISTO (this will be the plot twist)
>tells Amberson to sell him Norman's soul and in exchange he'll uhhhhhh I dunno, make sure Norman stays good?
>Amberson agrees but OH NO Meshito tricked him
>reveals this was all part of his keikaku (translator's note: keikaku means plan) to create the Green Goblin
>he did this because he needs someone to keep wienerblocking Peter
>("Why don't you just make sure the other guy is never born?" asks Amberson. Mephisto ignores him.)
>Amberson cries and the shame of selling his son to the devil drives him to drink and gamble
>everything happens as normal
>we get 435 panels of Gwen's neck snapping
no need to thank me, Nick, here - you can take this storyline, no credit needed
The sad part of reading this is suspecting modern Marvel would think it's a well idea to rewrite a character who's existence was meant to demonstrate an example of the cycle of abuse into a good guy.
I wouldn't be opposed to giving Amberson a little more depth tbh but whatever he gets better be less than or equal to horrors he puts younger Norman through. I want to know why Norman thought he was helping Mucky by murdering the dog. You don't get rationalizations like that if Daddy was normal. We know Amberson wasn't but, eh, you get the point.
Also, like someone mentioned earlier in the thread, Marvel had better give Norman's mom a name. I've wanted to know her side of things for years.
Did she ever think of snatching her son and fleeing her husband permanently?
Did she ever leave by herself?
We know they're Catholics and that religion doesn't believe in divorce. Did that impact her decision to stay with her domestic abuser?
We got the betrayed expression from young Norman as he watched her forgive the man who hurt them both. Why not explore that more?
There's a lot about young Norman's life and the people in it that I've wanted to know.
When I started reading Gold Goblin, my fanic-y theory was that Amberson might have intended to use Mucky in dog fighting as a means to make the family money. Norman thought Mucky was too weak to survive the torture of those rings. The child had the option to take his pet to one of the many animal rescue organizations. He thought adults wouldn't believe a seven-year-old over his father, and it would entail ratting out his family. So, he chose not to tell anyone, and he murdered the dog.
Can you imagine how badly Twitter would take the idea that? I can see people screaming about how it forgives abusers because obviously they never would have hurt their victims on their own. The devil had to make them do it. Don't get me wrong. I would hate it. The reactions would still be funny as hell to watch.
He never was?
you mean Gabe being drawn like Norman? It happened rarely (so like, two out of his uhhh four appearances), but the American Son mini had him looking more like Norman. Definitely had his crazy, smug face
>feelings of being robbed of any more of Norman's stories including Harry, Gabe and Sarah intensify
I'm just prissy we never got scenes of Norman and the twins together that weren't flashbacks. I don't count Kindred crying about his/her/its keikaku to Norman or whatever, that was 100% gonna be Harry being a petty b***h (like all Osborns).
Home boy's getting some mad props for not looking like Peter at the very least.
Harry goes home at the end of the day, flips out an overpriced iPhone, types in AskReddit, finds the first [Stories] Customer Service People of Reddit: What are your horror stories? he can get, and just unleashes his entire work day on an unsuspecting forum.
>"Also he said he's going to kill your daughter in about 10 years."
How normal pre FF marvel earth was is a weird topic, especially with the sliding time scale. Superheroes were clearly a thing in WW2, and then there is an ever larger gap between it and the modern re-emergence of superpowered beings. It is weird for it to go from fantasy WW2 to mostly normal for decades. Offcourse there are stories set in between that show other fantastical elements, but those also have bizard implication when they should be well known to the public.
Like Blue Marvel, black superman existing in the '60 should be an unmistakable moment in history, but we are suppossed to believe verybody just forgot to bring him up for the first 50 years of publication history.
In one of Rob Liefeld's podcasts about the Heroes Reborn books, he talked about sending Dan Fraga, one of the Extreme Studios artists at the time, from LA to New York to hand-deliver their final issues of Captain America and Avengers, with instructions not to hand them over until it was confirmed that Marvel had paid them, and Fraga took the opportunity to also meet some Marvel editors and get some work from them, including this issue.
Say what you like about the story, I do like the art, and would have liked to see him draw more Norman stories.
do the good -1 issue where Wolverine bangs Spider-Man's mom and teaches his dad how to make web shooters
What the frick?
Everything about this cover makes me roll my eyes. It's like Original Sin but even more dumb.
Going to be honest, this is NOT something that ever needed to be bought back. There are so many better call backs to do. When was the last time we saw Fusion (the one people know or the original)? The Return of Vulture (Blackie Drago)? Revenge of Charlie Weiderman?
Hell, a 12 issue storyline about the fricking Hypno Hustler stepping up his game sounds like better time.
>Hypno Hustler stepping up his game
%3D
Is Hypno Hustler still getting a movie over at Sony? They might have to write something for him at some point. Same goes for El Muerto if it ever gets out development hell.
El Muerto has to be the most random choice for a villain movie ever.
bamp
This thread last way longer than I thought it would.
That's basically what I meant to say when I said "for selfish reasons." Norman was itching for the opportunity to profit from his co-worker sticking his hand in the proverbial cookie jar. But, in this particular instance, a little selfishness when reporting on a crime isn't criminal. Stromm's illegal deed established that the scientist deserved imprisonment in the first place. This becomes even more evident when he tries to kill the man who ratted on him to the police. There is no question that or man's unlawful "homicide by heart attack" against storm remains illegal. It's undeniable that Norman's criminal "homicide by heart attack" on the elderly Professor Stromm remains illegal.
As a would-be murderer, Ditko Stromm drew greater sympathy. Unquestionably, Romita's telling of Ditko's narrative is a retcon, but that decades-old retcon altered how the incident transpired in canon. I hadn't meant to make a meta-observation of the character's creator's first portrayal of the tale when I said "originally" in that post. I'd only meant to refer to the chronological order of the modified event that transpired before any future reprehensible acts that Norman would later commit against Stromm.
What as the original comment
That was my own response to the post about Osborn railroading Stromm. Something weird happened to the formatting, so I edited, deleted and reposted. I can't believe I missed that I wrote the "homicide by heart attack" bit twice. It's been a comedy of errors, lol.
hampter
Bump
Thanks
FACE FRONT, TRUE BELIEVER!!!!
THIS HERE IS AN OFFICIAL TRIED AND TRUE
READING BUMP!
artists FEAR brickhouse Norman