26 Comments

1. @Evan

   You’re welcome.

2. @hornacek — That’s right — I forgot about that little bit of dialogue. I know that Peter admired Norman’s “really brilliant” work on nanotechnology, as well, but I think that as far as any kind of relationship between the two of them went.

   I’m sort of embarrassed how long it’s been since I’ve seen that movie, but I’ve certainly watched it many, many times.

   Thank you!

3. @Evan

   At the beginning of the film Harry tells Peter that Norman really likes Peter and wants to adopt him (or something like that) so we can assume Norman has heard a lot about Peter from Harry and is impressed by him. I think (?) they don’t actually meet until their first scene in the movie but they both already know a lot about each other.

4. You know, even within the Raimi film itself, I always wondered why Norman tells Peter “I’m like a father to you. Be a son to me now.” I mean, I know why he says it — to gain an edge in the fight — but that was all on Norman’s side. He admired Peter for wanting to “make it under [his] own steam.” But there was never a moment where Peter viewed Norman like a father figure, that I can recall.

   At most, it’s just a couple of lines that I guess we, as viewers, are meant to just accept, I suppose.

5. @Michael

   In ASM #3 Otto is not evil before his accident but he’s not doing good deeds and beloved by his fellow scientists, who call him “Doctor Octopus” behind his back. And he thinks about making radiation his servant – not something a good person who wants to help others would think.

   SM Unlimited #3 (Obituary for an Octopus) picks up on this by giving his full origin, and how he was so angry at his mother ruining his chance at romance that he was rude and angry with everyone.

   Again, he was not evil pre-accident, but he was not the good person who wanted to help the world that SM2, other cartoons, and the PS4 game describe.

6. @edgelesspigeon

   Yeah, we have had more than a few issues where we have seen flashbacks of Norman’s earlier life, and he was not a good person then. And I’m pretty sure most/all of those flashback issues are Norman’s own words/recollections. Did Norman make the deal with Mephisto when he was 5?

   Yeah, I remember one of the Flashback (-1) issues was about Richard and Mary Parker on a spy mission where they met Logan, but I wasn’t sure if one of the other Spidey books did a -1 issue with young Peter meeting younger Norman, but that sounds about right.

   Reminds me of the older Simpsons episode where Homer does something dumb to Mr. Burns who asks Smithers “What was that man’s name?” and Smithers replies “That’s Homer Simpson, sir.” and Burns says “Simpson, huh? I’ll remember that name.” And of course he doesn’t.

   So why would Norman remember meeting this random teenager? It’s not like he has any connection to Harry, who he won’t meet until years later when they both go to ESU. I bet Norman forgot all about meeting Peter the day after those -1 events happened.

7. @Hornacek- In Amazing Spider-Man 3, there’s no indication that Ock is a bad person before the explosion. The doctors say ” The X-rays show an uncertain amount of brain damage! I’m afraid his mind has been permanently damaged!” The implication is that Ock’s psychosis was caused by the brain damage. It was Spider-Man Unlimited 3, by DeFalco, which suggested that Ock was a bad person before the accident. (Although Fingeroth was building on an earlier line of dialogue in Web of Spider-Man 4 where Ock’s psychiatrist suggests that Ock’s pathology isn’t organic but has roots in his childhood.)

8. @Hornacek

   Oh, yeah, there was that very brief interaction Peter and Norman in “Peter Parker: Spider-Man” -1, but it was for like, less than a minute.

   I willing to let this early meeting slide because there’s no reason to expect Pete or Norman to remember a guy they spoke to for half a minute three years later. I wouldn’t remember a conversation like this three year laters. And seeing as this took place BEFORE Peter was bitten by the spider and Uncle Ben died, and before Norman became the Green Goblin, I think it’d be even less likely for them to remember given all the stuff that happened in the intervening time.

9. Another thing that bothers me about this issue is Peter’s “I’m beginning to think that might be the real you.” Now, I’m not saying Norman was born or predestined to be a monster but a combination of the choices he made, a predisposition to antisocial behavior (he killed his dog when he was a child!), and his toxic upbringing made him a bad man well before he donned his green-and-purple costume. I think Peter once referred to him, though I don’t know where, as “a bad man turned worse” after the Goblin formula. The formula only exacerbated his evil and mental instability, it didn’t create it. Norman himself said this in the PREVIOUS STORY ARC to Doc Ock! Is Wells not even paying attention to his own past issues?

10. @Aqu

    Yeah, I was thinking when I was writing this review that there was probably some flashback issue (like the literal -1 Flashback issues Marvel did years ago) where young “Petey” met a pre-Goblin Norman who took an interest in him. But I kept thinking “No, that’s young Petey meeting Doctor Octavius at science camp in the 90s cartoon”.

    And even if there was a flashback showing this interaction, that doesn’t fit in with what we saw in ASM #39 – Peter recognizes the unmasked Goblin from “that hair, those facial features” and realizes it’s Harry’s father.

    And earlier in #39, when the Goblin gasses Spidey and then watches him unmask later, he doesn’t recognize Peter until he follows him to the Bugle where he overhears his name being said by someone else. “Peter Parker” is a stranger to Norman at this point.

    If another writer did write a flashback story where young Peter and Norman met and knew each other, that doesn’t fit with established continuity.

11. I butt in the conversation only to say that I bet there is a retconning story out there showing the two had father-son exchanges before.
    And no, I’m not willing to waste my time looking for what would be an excuse for the umpteenth continuity overlooking.

12. @edgelesspigeon

    You’d think that with all of the Kraven stories, we’d have at least one time where he was in the middle of a long prolonged fight where his jungle-potion-enduced strength would start to wear out due to how long the fight had been going on. We’ve definitely seen Spidey run out of webfluid in the middle of a fight.

    The “Norman treated Peter like a son when they first met” is either Zells thinking the Raimi films are the comicbook continuity, or trying to blend the movies with the comics. The stories you mentioned are the first times the hint of a father/son or mentor/mentee relationship is ever mentioned, and those are long after Norman’s death and return.

    It’s like how since SM2 every introduction of Doc Ock in a new medium has him being a good person who gets turned evil by the tentacles, when if you look back at ASM #3, he was always a bad person. Before the accident nobody liked him and he was all about himself, not helping others.

    I probably could have found that ASM #39 panel online but I was glad to have the Masterworks volume on my bookshelf I could pull out and confirm “yes, this is the first time Peter sees/meets Norman”. Spidey is in the same room with him in the Robot Master story in ASM #37, but they don’t actually meet or talk to each other.

13. Yeah, the whole Peter-Norman father/son thing really doesn’t work for the Earth-616 continuity. There’s occasional elements of it, such as in “The Revenge of the Green Goblin” (RotGG #1-3, ASM Vol 2 #25, and PP:SM #25), “A Death in the Family” (PP:SM #44-47), and MKSM #1-12, which JR talks about in his “Green with Evil” and “Spider-Man: Shush” articles. But as a whole that’s just not the fundamental nature of their relationship, and the irony is that the father-son dynamics subtext started AFTER both were mortal enemies.

    And any attempt to say there were interactions between Peter and Norman prior to ASM #39 (as opposed to Spidey and the Goblin, of course), would fall flat on its face. The panel from #39 in the review makes it clear that Peter doesn’t know Norman personally and only realizes who he is based on familial resemblance and his name.

14. @Hornacek

    Yes, you’re correct that he needs to take potion regularly to maintain its effects, though how regularly was never established. Once a month? Every few months? Every few weeks?

    As for why we’ve never seen him losing his strength in the middle of the fight, well, the Doylist explanation is that the potion isn’t mean to be a potential weakness of Kraven’s, just a justification for his powers and for why somebody born before the Russian Revolution looks like he’s middle-aged at most. The Watsonian rationale is probably that a master hunter like Kraven, with his meticulous planning, wouldn’t start a hunt when the effects of potion are about to wear off.

15. @edgelesspigeon

    Even when it showed Kraven fighting animals, I always took that to be that he had above-average strength, not super-human strength.

    The way Kraven mentioned the potions he’d taken over the years to make him a better hunter or prolong his lifespan, it sounded like they were things he had to take regularly, not just one potion he took that would last him forever. I just wonder why we never had a Kraven fight where his strength disappeared in the middle of the battle and he said “Oh no, my mystical jungle potions are wearing off!”

16. @Hornacek

    I mean, as Michael said, he’s able to stop an elephant with a punch. And his first appearance in ASM #15 shows him fighting and beating two gorillas. He’s also, over various appearances, punched through a wall, demolished a chimney with a punch, ripped a streetlight out of the ground, shattered concrete, and tackled an enemy with enough force to snap a thick tree in half.

    As for the potion, it’s not clear how regularly he needs to imbibe, or how long the effects last. The potion is also responsible not only for this enhanced abilities, but extending his lifespan and keeping him young (which he shared with his half-brother the Chameleon).

17. @Sthenurus

    I’m curious if they’ll print any letters in a few issues about people pointing this out, and how Lowe will try to rationalize that Zells was right by saying there were plenty of Peter/Norman interactions before they met in ASM #39 that we never saw, so this wasn’t a mistake. The whole thing just reeks of either Zells now knowing his history, or knowing but not caring and assuming the readers will just think the Raimi continuity is what matters.

    I admit I am interested in what happens for the Sinful Spider-Man. Is he full-blown evil and just running around killing people indiscriminately? Or is it more like when Ben had the Carnage symbiote and he had this internal struggle to try to lead a normal life but the symbiote kept telling him to kill people? I’d love for Zells to pleasantly surprise me here, but what am I basing this on – the quality of Zells’ stories so far in this run? Oof.

18. @edgelesspigeon

    I don’t know, I’ve always felt that Kraven is something who only has above-average strength because of jungle potions he drinks, but that he’s not in the league of people with legitimate strength. Have we ever seen a Kraven story where his strength starts to fade during a battle, since I assume the jungle potions he takes are not permanent? Kind of like Spidey running out of webfluid in the middle of a fight.

    And yes, Spidey can be hurt by people with “peak human” strength, or even super-strength less strong than him, but I’ve always thought Kraven has to rely on tricks, traps, animals, etc to place himself on an even-level with Spidey. There’s a reason in the first part of Fearful Symmetry that when he’s captured by Kraven he’s not worried at all.

    Yeah, Spidey is well known for pulling his punches when he hits people that aren’t invulnerable or wearing armor, etc. Despite his advanced strength and jungle skills, Kraven has no invulnerability, so Spidey would likely pull his punches when hitting him because one punch at full strength would probably have his fist go right through him.

19. @Evan –

    My “Kraven” spelling is not a clone thing. It just feels like Marvel is trying to gaslight us into thinking that either this “Kraven” is the original Kraven, or one of his sons. I don’t know why they’re refusing to remind us that he’s a clone. Just accept it and turn into the skid, you cowards.

    I also noticed that “Kraven” calls Queen Goblin “Kafka”. I guess they’re not a first name basis?

    “The sins-going-into-the-spear and the transfer-them-to-someone-else bit reminds me of the cursed strawberry pie in Thinner.” Wow, I thought I was the only was the only one who read Thinner. “It is a push.”

    That Norman/Peter panel just annoyed me because it’s either Zells not knowing that this never happened in the comics, or he just doesn’t care and is assuming the readers are dumb enough to think the Raimi movies are the actual continuity.

    While I don’t like this blending of media for Spidey’s history (something they do all the time with the-symbiote-makes-you-evil thing), it *can* be done well. A good example is Arthur C. Clarke’s 2010 novel, which is a sequel to both his 2001 novel and the 2001 movie by him and Stanley Kubrick. There were things in the 2001 film that weren’t in the novel, and vice versa, and the 2010 novel was a sequel to both (i.e. in 2001 film they went to Jupiter, and in the novel they went to Saturn, so in 2010 Clarke said it was Jupiter). He acknowledged in the 2010 forward that the novel was a sequel to both the film and movie, and any differences from the 2001 novel to the 2010 novel should be taken with a grain of salt. But what Zells is doing here trying to rewrite Peter and Norman’s past is nothing like this. It’s just bad writing, assuming the readers are too dumb and lazy to know the difference between histories.

    In the G.O.D.S. page, is the guy with the white stripe in his hair supposed to be the X-Men villain Ahab? (https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Roderick_Campbell_(Earth-811))

20. “Kraven” going toe to toe with Spidey doesn’t bother me. What does is, as all of you pointed out, the Norman/Peter bit! That’s absolute fail on both the writer and the editor in chief part.

    The Spider that Cackle could be a good story beat for both Peter and Norman… But I do NOT trust wells to do it right. I’m.expecting something coming along the left field (a la Kamala) and solve the problem.

21. @Hornacek

    “However, due to his fighting experience, his strength is just enough to go toe-to-toe with the likes of Spider-Man.” I think this means the combination of his strength and experience is enough to harm Spider-Man, not that his strength is doubled. Which makes sense; Spider-Man is much more durable than a normal human but he’s not bulletproof. Enemies with merely “peak human” strength like the Kingpin are able to hurt Spidey, let alone Kraven’s above peak human strength.

    Granted, if Spidey stops holding back, Kraven would be a smear on the pavement, but it’s been pretty consistent throughout Spider-Man’s publication that a combination of Spidey’s restraint and an enemy’s skill is enough to allow the latter to hold their own if they’re good and lucky enough.

22. @Hornacek — If Puddin’ likes the comic, it must be good, right? Right?

    Before I even got to the footnotes, I was going to say that I will never tire of your spelling “Kraven” as such, so I commend you for that. By the way, if he and Ashley Kafka are together now, why does he call her Dr. Kafka and not Ashley? Perhaps more importantly, did she laugh maniacally like that when she got Norman’s sins?

    The sins-going-into-the-spear and the transfer-them-to-someone-else bit reminds me of the cursed strawberry pie in Thinner.

    Peter’s saying that Norman treated him like a son rankles me, as well. To go off on a mild tangent, it reminds me of when I read the Harry Potter series a few summers ago (under the assumption that I must be missing something monumental), and there was a line in Order of the Phoenix which I’ll paraphrase as “Harry disliked Malfoy ever since he met him on the Hogwarts Express.” This was incredibly frustrating to read, because that’s how the two of them met in the Sorcerer’s Stone movie. In the book, they met at Madame Malkin’s robe shop. I never really cared for Harry Potter anyway, but the fact that even the author herself couldn’t keep the continuity straight made me angry and made me like it even less. So once again we have in Spider-man a writer confusing the movie for the written lore.

    As for the panels that don’t deserve to be resized, I don’t know what to make of them, either. I don’t even know what “hamming your mule” means, but I’m afraid to look it up.

23. Ok, this makes *no* sense.

    From Kraven’s Marvel Wiki entry:

    “Superhuman Strength: Kraven was superhumanly strong and was capable of lifting approximately 2 tons. However, due to his fighting experience, his strength is just enough to go toe-to-toe with the likes of Spider-Man.”

    Spider-Man can lift TEN tons. That’s 5 times as much as Kraven. How does experience increase your strength by 5 times?

24. “Kraven had above-average strength from his jungle training and potions he had taken, but I thought that he didn’t have literal super-strength.”
    In his first appearance Kraven said, “I possess undreamed-of strength and speed, which I obtained by drinking a secret potion, stolen from the witch-doctor of an African tribe! With but one punch, I can stop the charge of a bull elephant!”
    It’s fairly clear that Stan intended Kraven to have super-strength.Do you know anyone who could stop the charge of a bull-elephant with one punch? And Kraven went hand-to-hand with Peter, Tigra, etc. on various occasions. And the various Handbooks. etc. confirm he had super-strength.

25. @Michael – “it’s possible that Kafka has some of Norman’s memories and knows where his hideouts are.” Does having Norman’s sins mean you have his memories? I thought it just made you evil.

    “the original Kraven had super-strength thanks to the magic potion he took. Presumably clone Kraven took the same potion, since he’s gone hand to hand with both Peter and Ben.” Kraven had above-average strength from his jungle training and potions he had taken, but I thought that he didn’t have literal super-strength.

    “Re: Peter not trying to knock Kraven down- I think he was worried that if Kraven dropped the spear it might fall on Norman.” But if he threw himself at “Kraven” it would knock him to the side, and whether he was holding Norman or the spear, it would get knocked to the side too.

    “Agreed that Peter seeing Norman as a father figure made no sense. Wells is thinking of the Raimi films.” I was worried about writing this in my review. I kept wondering “Wait, what if I’m forgetting something?” But I was sure that this was a creation of the Raimi films (and other cartoons, I think) and Marvel either chooses not to care or doesn’t remember that it’s not part of the comicbook continuity. Like how the symbiote in the comics never made you evil, but ever since the 90s cartoon some comics writers will pretend that it always did.

    “Re: Peter tossing women off of bridges- a variant cover for issue 34 shows Peter abducting MJ- so we might see that happen!” We all know that if it happens on a variant cover, it has to happen!

    “Why did Peter say that Michele didn’t know what kind of a man Janice’s father was? Tombstone has been arrested for many crimes in the past, including murder. And Robbie knew Lonnie before he became a villain, and has testified as a witness, so Tombstone’s identity HAS to be public knowledge.” I assume that Peter assumed that Michele was only friends with Janice and knew very little about her father.

    “One interesting thing about the letters page- they confirmed that Kamala was brought into Amazing BEFORE it was decided to kill her and resurrect her as a mutant. Which raises the question again- why did Wells bring her into the series? He did nothing with her before he killed her!” At this point do we really believe anything that Lowe says in the letters page?

26. Re: Kraven getting Norman’s old costume- it’s possible that Kafka has some of Norman’s memories and knows where his hideouts are.
    Re: Kraven withstanding Norman’s punch- the original Kraven had super-strength thanks to the magic potion he took. Presumably clone Kraven took the same potion, since he’s gone hand to hand with both Peter and Ben.
    Re: Peter not trying to knock Kraven down- I think he was worried that if Kraven dropped the spear it might fall on Norman.
    Agreed that Peter seeing Norman as a father figure made no sense. Wells is thinking of the Raimi films.
    Re: Peter tossing women off of bridges- a variant cover for issue 34 shows Peter abducting MJ- so we might see that happen!
    Why did Peter say that Michele didn’t know what kind of a man Janice’s father was? Tombstone has been arrested for many crimes in the past, including murder. And Robbie knew Lonnie before he became a villain, and has testified as a witness, so Tombstone’s identity HAS to be public knowledge.
    One interesting thing about the letters page- they confirmed that Kamala was brought into Amazing BEFORE it was decided to kill her and resurrect her as a mutant. Which raises the question again- why did Wells bring her into the series? He did nothing with her before he killed her!