The Green Goblin’s Comic Origins

When the Green Goblin first appears, he uses a broomstick rather than a glider. It’s basically the glider without the wings, and looks a hell of a lot simpler (though maybe more relevant to the costume?)

First call of business: team-up with The Enforcers to take down the wall-crawler.

Here’s when we bring in B.J. Cosmos, film producer extraordinaire and severely underrated Stan Lee era goofball.

The Green Goblin arrives and gives him an offer he can’t refuse (but really should, because it’s insane).

Side note: this may be the most 60s comic book panel ever.

Spidey meets with the Goblin, goes in guns blazing and comes out of it with a movie deal. One of the only times his fist-first approach has worked out… at least for a little while.

Heading down to the New Mexico desert shoot, they start production. Money is a serious motivator for Spider-Man, and one of the things that I wish was in more of the MCU outings. He needs money so bad he’s happy to mess around with this kind of nonsense, suppressing the idea that these might be the actual Enforcers rather than perfectly accurate actors.

Things come to blows pretty fast, and Spidey eventually figures out he’s been an A-Class chump – right in time for the Green Goblin to throw bombs his way – but not pumpkin bombs (yet).

Once the fight makes into this desert cave, they stumble upon – of all people – the Incredible Hulk. He’s not happy to be intruded upon, and he and Spider-Man end up being fairly evenly matched – with S-Man’s lightning reflexes and Hulk’s hard head.

Once the fight goes to shambles, BJ Cosmos is over Spider-Man and all about writing up a contract for the Hulk. This dude is begging to get fired.

Ol’ Gobby turns up again in The Amazing Spider-Man #17, the same year – where he upgrades his broomstick for the much more useful (and cool-looking) goblin glider. And he’s got a few more gimmicks up his sleeve.

One of these gimmicks is an “electronically-charged toy frog”. On top of that, there’s the smokey ghost grenade, ‘Goblin Sparks’ finger lasers, and of course the iconic pumpkin bombs.

After his scrap with the Human Torch, Goblin turns up again to try and rule the gangs of New York in The Amazing Spider-Man #23, where he forms a short-lived partnership with the Crime Master.

It’s later, after Peter goes to college and meets Harry Osborn, that we are introduced to Norman – who up until this point has been an unnamed background character in JJ’s country club.

For a number of issues, the mystery over who was behind the mask was teased and pondered over. A lot of fans thought it was JJ, Foswell, or even Mysterio.

Then comes the monumental issue where Norman is revealed as the Green Goblin – right after he discovers Peter is Spider-Man – in The Amazing Spider-Man #39 (1966).

An interesting note about this that I always forget is that Norman doesn’t actually know who Peter is when he first discovers SM’s identity.

He approaches Peter in Queens, making his worst nightmares come true in the most insane way. Still kind of a huge deal that this went down, 39 issues in.

He unmasks mid-monologue to Peter. I wonder if this was a good surprise to fans at the time, considering we hadn’t got a whole lot of Norman at this point.

Things turn around into Peter’s favour for once in this landmark issue #40, with the iconic John Romita cover.

Peter tricks Norman into monologuing even more, falling prey to the ol’ Bond villain routine.

I love how Norman’s retelling of how he balanced being a good father with work is juxtaposed with his clear neglect of Harry here.

Side note: this accident was later revealed to have been caused by Harry tampering with Norman’s chemicals.

Norman undergoes a similar brain damage to Doc Ock, one which he thinks has given him focus and brilliance, but is instead just insanity and brilliance.

Best factoid about GG: he chose green because it was his favourite colour.

Peter breaks free and suits up, and the ensuing fight sends GG flying into an electro-chemical charge from the fire started.

Then he gets the ol’ amnesia from the head injury, and the lack of a spider-sense going off convinces Peter he’s really gone straight.

So he disposes of the costume, allowing Norman to return to his regular life – unknowingly setting up his arch-rival to ruin his life when his memories return in a future story.