Comic Legend John Byrne isn’t a fan of Spider-Man’s arch-nemesis the Green Goblin. He recently agreed to do a commission for a fan of old Norman. However he couldn’t finish due to how much he dislikes the villain. Here’s Byrne’s quote,
When Jim Warden first asked me to do this one, I declined. I have no interest in the Green Goblin. In fact, I would go so far as to say I actively dislikethe Green Goblin. I have long felt his elevation to being Spider-Man’s “Number One Foe” was completely undeserved. That place belongs to Doctor Octopus!
Anyway, Jim would occasionally come back to this piece, asking if maybe I had changed my mind, and finally, about six months ago (maybe more) I relented. And then the thing sat festering in the back of my mind as I kept putting it off, and putting it off, and putting it off. . . .
So now, I give up! There are other commissions waiting on The List that I really WANT to do! If nothing else, this photo gives you a peek into my decidedly erratic way of “building” these pieces!
Sorry, Eric!!!
After the jump watch the fan tear up the commission. I personally like the art.
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If John was a tri pro he shit up swallow hid pride and do what the fab bloody requested..Just another reason to disliked this racist jerk
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It was a nice looking piece of art. Shame he didn’t just bite the bullet and go ahead and finish it.
I agree with Byrne… Spidey’s #1 villain is Doc Ock…
However, Peter Parker’s #1 villain is Norman Osborn…
BIG difference.
Did he at least give him his money back?
@23: That was like reading the 20,000+ word analysis of “The Sopranos”
finale written and posted online by a huge fan of the series (as to What
Really Happened at the end).
Although the piece you linked to was far more enjoyable. Still, SHEESH,
with the wall-to-wall coverage of the issue, the massive effort and detail…
Case. Bloody. Closed.
@22 – I agree. Norman not knowing Spideys ID has massively crippled his effectiveness as a villain. All of his appearances since New Ways To Die have been boring. De-powering him was a poor decision too.
Fair enough. I enjoyed SSM (well the first 20 issues) just because it was a concept that interested me.
Basically this: http://hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger.tumblr.com/post/77268781356/the-debate-norman-osborn-vs-otto-octavius-who-is-the
@#12-That’s probably because he hasn’t been a Spider-Man villain for years and still doesn’t know Peter’s identity. I think the Superiro character development for Otto was idiotic frankly and irrational. I’d go so far as to ask ‘what character development?’
@#13-I really hope they do regress Otto. Otto at this point isn’t a villain period so well done, we’ve lost a great Spider-Man villain. Between that and Venom being Flash now as well as Norman being depowered literally all of the big three are gone. Plus seriously…why should we detract something from Spider-Man for the sake of Doc Ock as a character? Why is he bigger than Spider-Man to the point where we’ll do something for his sake even at the detriment of Spider-Man himself, whom he exists to support as a character?
@#14-That ‘required’ presence was only there in 1997-1998 when Norman was the genuine main antagonist. 2 years in the grand scheme of things is nothing. I don’t think it’d help to elevate Otto to Norman’s status because the only way to do that would be to give Otto more accomplishments akin to Norman but in doing that they become less distinctive and frankly you’d lose a lot of what makes Otto cool. Otto has got a warped morality to him which means he’d never go to the same depths as a villain and Norman would.
@#11-I agree that moment rocked hard, but that alone does not an archnemesis make. Nearly killing the woman Spider-Man was starting to fall in love with isn’t as bad as actually killing the woman Spider-Man really was in love with and dare I say probably loved much more than he ever loved Felicia, with all due respect to her. Plus when Norman recovered from his amnesia twice Peter was on eggshells the whole time fearing for himself and his loved ones because he knew the Goblin could strike at any moment. In fact technically speaking Norman comparatively came closer to offing Spider-Man in ASM #39-40 than Otto ever did, whereas Spider-Man in the Owl/Octopus War has managed to simply outfight Octavius. Again, we are each entitled to our own preferences, but I really don’t think Otto is like objectively the archnemesis when compared to all Norman has accomplished.
@10, I was pretty much saying that with my initial post.
@10 – I agree; people tend to look at Spidey’s Archvillains in a static way. His “Archenemy” was different depending on the year. Ock and Green Goblin traded in the 60’s, until after Norman’s death when Ock resumed being the primary baddie. Then Hobgoblin came around, then Venom, then Harry (back again, but more effective as a villain) then Norman again. It’s all about perspective.
So… since we all got to see that commission without paying for it I think we effectively just Byrne-stole it.
Byrne just joined Tyson and and Terry Kavanagh on JR’s list, didn’t he?
Or he would, if JR gave a rat’s ass what John Byrne thought… which I doubt. 😛
I can understand Byrne preferring Doc Ock over the Green Goblin. Heck, I can understand anyone preferring Otto over Norman. Personally, my favorite Spider-Man villain is Venom, who is a pretty prominent villain himself.
But I don’t understand the need to diminish one character over another. You can like Otto without trying to take anything away from Norman. Otto has a pretty significant legacy of his own. But so does Norman. It doesn’t have to be a competition.
The Dr. Octopus/Green Goblin debate is actually summed up very well in the final issue of Superior Team-Up: they’re both equally effective villains, just in very different ways. You could argue over whether getting horribly killed by a high-tech machine is any more or less worse than seeing a loved one murdered in front of you, but in the end both Ock and the Goblin are damned good at what they do (that is, being bad).
As for John Byrne, he has every right to his opinion, although it may not do an artist’s reputation much good to ditch out on a commission over something as trivial as that. I’ve taken commissions for characters that I absolutely despised, but it’s not like I took the pieces to my grave (well, I hope not).
I doubt Byrne will have any trouble getting more commissions in the future (he says himself that he’s got a queue of them), so artists: don’t do what he did unless if you’ve made a name for yourself!
I think it would definitely help the series to elevate Otto to the same level of nemesis as the Green Goblin, as there was a weird sense for a while that the Green Goblin was a required presence for a storyline to “matter”, so he just turned up almost every time a storyline was any kind of event.
Although packing Norman off to be an Avengers villain for a while did also help deal with that, to be fair.
If they stick with what happened to Otto in SSM, and don’t wipe his memories, then Otto can’t really be Peter’s arch-enemy anymore. They will have to be more like prickly frenemies. Otto becomes something similar to Namor. I say this because Peter and Otto understand each other too well at this point. They have lived each other’s lives from the inside-out. I hope they don’t regress Otto back to what he was.
Well at least this explains Norman’s treatment in Chapter One….
That said while Norman is undoubtedly Spider-Man’s greatest enemy, I feel like he’s become a bit of a flat character lately, and has ended up in the same rut as the Joker. But that has more to do with the poor writing that has blighted some of the Spider-Man books lately, and less to do with the quality of the Norman Osborn character.
Dock Ock never seemed to get the character development he deserved until he became the Superior Spider-Man (which was the most I’d enjoyed Otto since the 80’s).
@10 There was that one time when Doc Ock nearly killed Black Cat in Bill Mantlo’s Spectacular run during the Owl-Octopus war. That very same run where Peter feared for his and Felicia’s life since Doc Ock was so unrelenting. I think that was one of Doc Ock’s defining moments as an archenemy. I also consider Doc Ock to be Spider-Man’s archenemy but I am also a really big fan of Norman.
@#6-One doesn’t judge the archenemy on one’s preference, you judge them on what they’ve DONE. It’s cool that you or Byrne or anyone else PREFER Otto. I prefer Darkseid to Lex Luthor as a Superman villain. But objectively speaking Norman has done more and earned the top spot.
Doc Ock was really only Spider-Man’s arch-foe because he happened to fight him more than anyone else, but their confrontations weren’t the heated emotional affairs of the Spider-Man/Goblin battles, wherein the Goblin (early on) was primarily all about killing Spider-Man, as opposed to Otto who kind of did that as a side project. Really after Norman died Hobgoblin, the Jackal, Venom or Harry Osborn could all have laid equal claims with Otto as being Spider-Man’s archnemesis.
When discussing things about Spider-Man’s mythology such as his who is his arch-foe I don’t think we should put much stock by the word of the man who’s greatest contribution was the Reboot of the late 1990s and early 2000s, Chapter One which actively retconned the works of Lee and Ditko and gave us a comic book where an underage girl made out with the hero of the series mere days after his wife died. Seriously, who the Hell is Byrne to be weighing in on this, he knows jack about Spider-Man and helped drag the series into the gutter.
You have to be nuts to rip up original art from John Byrne.
Even unfinished, I agree that I think the artwork does look really good, I would definitely have kept it. Byrne actually does draw the Goblin really well, he conveys the madness to chilling effect, and gives the impression that GG is a force to be reckoned with despite the costume.
I have to admit, I almost sort of agree with Byrne, I myself have always had a preference to Doc Ock over the Goblin, I always got the impression during the original Lee/Ditko era that Ock was intended to be the archenemy. That being said, the Goblin has more than earned archenemy status, what with finding out Spidey’s identity, killing Gwen, stealing baby May, etc. Doc Ock went through quite a lot of decay after a while too, I noticed that some writers treated him like just another villain as opposed to being a main villain. Superior Spider-Man has given Otto some more credit as a potential nemesis, but the Goblin did pretty much own him in the end.
@3 He did form the Sinister Six.
Byrne was also the guy who wanted to kill Jason Todd with AIDS and did that real skeezy Action Comics story with a mind-controlled Superman and Big Barda having sex for a porno. So, yeah. I’m not a fan of him or his opinions.
Ock never did anything to warrant archenemy status until Slott forced his fanfiction into the book.
Wow! I don’t know if I would have ripped up an original piece of art like that! I wonder if he was given another drawing.
I agree that Doc Ock is Spideys arch enemy – I also enjoy the goblin as a character.
I agree with Byrne. I mean, why should a villain that routinely bedeviled Spider-Man, escaping capture time and again, was a shadowy specter that haunted Spider-Man’s early days with the mystery of who he was, what he was planning, and when he would strike, who continually bested Spider-Man every time they battled, and was later revealed to have a personal connection to Spider-Man by the way of one of his best friends, LONG before he ever killed off Spider-Man’s girlfriend could POSSIBLY be considered Spider-Man’s “arch enemy” over someone like Doc Ock.
Truly, the guy whose biggest claim to fame was killing Gwen Stacy should take second fiddle to the guy who- for the longest time- was best known for marrying Aunt May.