“Go on!” shouts the young man from inside the car. “Touch it! Whatsa matta? Go now, before the ‘Green Goblin’ gets ya!” The two young ladies also cajole the poor sap stuck on the outside. The Dare: to walk down the shadowed alley, touch the brick wall at the dead end, and come back. The most frightening thing about this is not the darkness or the rough neighborhood. It’s the fact that the mysterious Green Goblin stalks these streets. The same Goblin that mothers warn their children about-- a legendary figure of the night that may swoop down upon you, without warning! In fact, what’s that shadow there, lurking over this scene?
After finally mustering the courage (or succumbing to the peer pressure), the bespectacled young man finally makes it to the dead-end alley, only to find the truth about his friend’s practical joke when they drive off! One girl chastises their friend as he drives away, “what a lousy thing to do!” When a strange figure suddenly fades into sight of their headlights-- it's the Green Gobin! He IS real! The car swerves to avoid the legend-made-real, atop its flying glider. Now it’s about to crash! The young people look up-- inches before impact, the car has stopped short. The Green Goblin is holding the back end with both hands, saving the youngsters from certain doom! He says nothing, but leaves the car to glide over to the butt of their joke. The man cringes under the grinning gaze of the Goblin, and when he looks up, the Green Goblin has vanished.
Our scene shifts in a completely opposite direction. We are now high above the streets of Manhattan in the high-powered executive office of Norman Osborn. He himself sits behind an ominous desk, with a high-backed, posh office chair. Two other men, each seated in less-impressive chairs with no place but their lap for their paperwork, help Osborn pour over the countless reams of whatever business papers consume this afternoon meeting. When his son, Harry, bursts in, Osborn waits to finish a very legal-ese paragraph.
Harry can’t wait, though, youthfully exuberating how he’s been named salutatorian for his prep school. Osborn, never looking up, holds but one finger up until the paragraph is finished. When he does look up, his face is kind, but stern. “I thought we were going for *valedictorian*, son.” Harry stammers, but his enthusiasm has been tempered. He tries to explain that that Stacy girl . . . but Osborn has but to raise his eyebrows to remind Harry that now is Not The Time.
Dinner that night is very awkward, with Tension being served in heaping portions. The unease was carried over from the earlier conversation and is compounded by the fact that, as always, it’s just father and son at a table and dining room built for twenty. Harry only wants his father to congratulate him, which he does, while reminding him that he always wants Harry to do his best.
“You mean to do YOUR best, right?”
“I just want to make sure you’re ready.”
“Ready for WHAT, dad? You micromanage Oscorp so much there’ll never be room for me.”
“Great responsibility demands great care.”
“Is that why you 'care' so much about MY life, too?”
“You have the potential, you just have to strive for it.”
“What if I don’t have it, dad? What if this,” he spreads his arms wide, “is all I got-- all YOU got.”
“You don’t understand. This isn’t about me...”
“No, it isn’t.” Harry stands up. “It’s about ME.” And leaves the table.
That night, Harry spend his time packing clothes and sundries into a duffel bag. His time here was over. He could no longer stay with his father. He wasn’t sure quite WHERE he was going, as long as it was SOMEWHERE other than HERE. Maybe he’d call once he got there. He turned out the light and crept out of the Excelsior Towers (owned by Oscorp, of course). He wondered how long it would be before his dad noticed he was gone. Or (a lump caught in his throat) if his dad would EVER notice he was gone.
That night, Norman Osborn stood overlooking the city from the many-windowed walls of his bedroom. His heart ached for his son, not that his son noticed. He raised him to be a free-thinker, to speak his mind. But those things he said... Through Oscorp, Osborn had his finger on the pulse of New York City, and, by extension, the world. Its politics, its sciences, its arts, its economics, its charities... Osborn was determined that if it lay in his control, he would strive to uphold it in a worthy manner. And even then, there were things that lay out of his control. The crime, the downtrodden, the accidents, the desperate. For these, a different kind of striving would be required. He opened the cabinet to reveal his Goblin mask...
Deep into the city, Harry realized that nighttime wasn’t probably the best time to run away. He was growing increasingly tired and feeling increasingly panicked. Perhaps it was those reasons that he unwittingly stumbled upon five guys unloading furniture from a warehouse down the way. Wait-- that doesn’t look like furniture? What exactly are they doing? He could just make out the fact they were statues when one of the unloaders noticed Harry taking notice. Harry had to take off, but they were all on top of him in a heartbeat.
Wham! Sok! Crack! These men, uncouth brawlers all, nearly succeeded in overwhelming Harry. Nearly. Beating all odds, Harry gave as good as he received-- a combination of martial arts training and strength conditioning imposed by his father. Yet, just as the weary Harry was ready to celebrate his victory, he turned to see an inhuman sight directly in back of him-- a man in a gangly red and black costume, dangling from a line! The man’s bulbous eyes filled Harry with a knee-jerk revulsion, like noticing a bug was on his shoulder.
“Hi. I’m Spider-Man. Did my friends frighten you? No? Too bad!” The man was flippant. His fist darted out, moving faster than Harry had ever witnessed. Harry was knocked for a loop. Spider-Man tried to explain to Harry that he had been employed to see that those statues made it to the black market, and since money was kinda tight right now, he’d rather see the job completed than completely botched. Harry didn’t have much to say in retort, seeing as how Spider-Man continued to batter him around like a kitten playing with his prey. When Harry lay in a heap, bruised and barely breathing, Spider-Man loomed before him, raising his fist for a final blow. “It was only a matter of time before the streets would do this to you, anyway. I mean, that brillo-pad hair-- ”
“What?” Spider-Man turned just in time to avoid the Green Goblin, who came soaring in, silently, from out of nowhere. From out of his fingertips shot zaps of electricity that caught Spider-Man in a different kind of web. “Stay away from him!” came the stern warning, and the Goblin produced pumpkin-bombs from his pouch. For a time, the two exchanged blows, but Spider-Man was always too nimble to be seriously injured, while the Goblin’s padded costume saved him from Spider-Man’s attacks. Finally, Spider-Man managed to ensnare the Goblin’s glider in a web. But the villain wasn’t interested in pressing the attack. His mission had failed anyway, so he’d just assume go home and catch a late-late movie on TV.
The Green Goblin rushed to Harry’s side, but his boy’s body was broken. Norman Osborn tore off his mask and screamed tear-soaked anguish into the night.
Harry Osborn awoke the next day in his bedroom. All around him were medical equipment, but he wasn’t in a hospital. His dad, who had never left his boy’s side, explained that there was only one thing that could save him-- the same Goblin Formula that he had used to become the avenging urban legend, the Green Goblin. The same strength-enhancing elixir coursed through Harry’s veins now. It wasn’t quite the way he had planned it, but Osborn believed Harry to be ready for his true legacy.
He opened the cabinet to reveal a pair of costumes. One, the Green Goblin; the other, a variation of the same. He asked Harry to become his partner, the Gremlin, another strange guardian angel of New York City. But he didn’t have to. He would respect his son’s wishes, wherever they led him.
In tears, Harry proudly looked up at his father and said, despite his weakened condition, “Sure . . . dad. Sounds . . . like fun.”
Norman held his son close. “I’m ... sorry, son. No more secrets. No more demands. I promise, that from now on, whatever I do, we can do . . . together. As a family.”
Cover and text by Danny Wall
Did you know...
that I went through a lot of names trying to find a good code name for Harry's costumed identity? I started with the Grey Goblin, but I wanted something a bit more old-school. How about the Hobgoblin? Well, that shares the same problem as my first idea-- it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue when you partner it with "The Green Goblin and..." So I had finally come up with what I thought was a good name-- Ghostling. But I ultimately settled on the Gremlin. Thank goodness, right?
Posted by: Danny Wall | September 18, 2006 at 12:55 PM