The Green Goblin has a goofy yet iconic design, with the monstrous costume actually being the result of Norman Osborn's traumatic childhood.

Easily Spider-Man's most iconic and personal villain is Norman Osborn, a.k.a. the Green Goblin. This hooded, horror-themed bad guy has haunted Peter Parker's life for decades, striking at his heart more than any other enemy. Despite his importance, his green, ghoulish gimmick doesn't immediately make sense, and the comics have typically failed to explain it.

Osborn's guise as the Green Goblin would eventually be explained as the result of trauma, but in the real world, it had a far more mystical origin. This shows how later stories can add to a character's mythology, as well as just how random a property's disparate elements can be before becoming their most notable incarnations.

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The Green Goblin persona is incredibly ghastly, with the demonic-looking design appearing almost otherworldly. The ultimate expression of supervillains wearing "Halloween" costumes, Green Goblin has in his iconic "bag of tricks" an arsenal of equally spooky weapons. These include razor bats and pumpkin bombs, not to mention the bat-like Goblin Glider that he rides on. These all go along with the goblin theme, but it was never really explained. Even with Norman Osborn's brilliant insanity, it made no sense that he would randomly take on such a weird disguise. It wouldn't be until decades after the character's debut that the answer would finally be given.

In Spider-Man: Revenge of the Green Goblin (by Roger Stern, Ron Frenz, Pat Ollife, George Rodrick Jr., Matt Hicks, and Dake Sharpe) the origin of Norman's goblin persona was revealed. As a child, Norman's drunkard father would beat and abuse the boy's mother. Likewise, he would similarly mistreat his son in an attempt to "make him into a man," a tragic attribute that would later color Norman's relationship with his son Harry. One such incident had Norman's dad throwing his son into a dark room to deal with his fear of darkness. The younger Osborn would fear that a malicious goblin was prowling around in the darkness, instilling him with a great sense of fear for such a creature. With this personal fear, it's no surprise that Norman would later retool it to strike fear into the hearts of innocent people and his arch-rival Spider-Man as the Green Goblin.

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The supernatural look of the Green Goblin wasn't a coincidence, and it initially was more than just skin-deep. Stan Lee's initial idea for the Green Goblin was that he was a mythological demon, being freed from a sarcophagus by a film crew to wreak havoc on modern society. Spider-Man artist Steve Ditko changed this to him being simply a human in a costume, albeit one greatly enhanced by the Goblin formula, as it was later revealed. The fact that this original idea was so different from what was later done with the Green Goblin shows just how haphazard the development of some Silver Age comic book concepts was.

Changing from a demon to a man in a costume last-minute illustrates that the creators of the Green Goblin didn't really think of much motivation for his costume and gimmick. It's also somewhat of a predecessor to the Scriers and Judas Traveler in the infamous "Clone Saga." Many felt that these quasi-mystical opponents didn't fit in with Spider-Man's more grounded world, ironic given the way that his greatest enemy was intended to be written. The Scriers were also instrumental in the Clone Saga and The Gathering of the Five, to which Revenge of the Green Goblin was a sequel. As with those villains, Green Goblin's supposedly supernatural nature was revealed as anything but, even if the nightmare was once real for Norman Osborn.

Timothy Blake Donohoo is a graduate of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where he majored in Communication and minored in Creative Writing. A professional freelance writer and marketing expert, he’s written marketing copy and retail listings for companies such as Viatek. In his spare time, he enjoys reading, playing video games, watching documentaries and catching up on the latest Vaporwave and Electro-Swing musical releases.

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