We’ve reached the end of the series. After twelve issues of highs and lows, “Green Goblin” #13 wraps up the adventures of Phil Urich, nephew of Bugle reporter Ben and heroic wearer of the Goblin mantle. With the last installment showing us Phil lost his abilities, or at least access to them, it does cause me to wonder what’s left for a true final issue. Turns out the answer is super depressing. Hope you liked “Amazing Spider-Man” #50, because the trash can panel gets referenced not once, but twice!
Written by Tom DeFalcoCover by Josh Hood
Pencils by Josh Hood
Inks by Derek Fisher
Letters by Jim Novak
Colors by Gregory Wright
Color Separations by Malibu HuesPhil desperately for any way to repair the Goblin mask as The Daily Bugle downsizes their staff.
So… this issue is a bummer. If you’re excited by twenty pages of folks being sad, you’ll still be disappointed by the massive drop in quality art-wise. The big ending is that he doesn’t like Lynn anymore because she doesn’t like the Goblin, something that was established already. And that he ended up with Merry instead, something established twice before this issue. That being said, showing Phil coping with the loss of the Goblin does need to happen though. Because Phil isn’t the type of character to accept he hand he’s been given without doing something less than rational. And trying to fight crime in a ski mask covers that.
The issue opens with Phil trying to convince Freddie to fix the mask, claiming it’s a VR headset. When that doesn’t work, Phil decides he doesn’t need the mask, nor the powers it activates to fight crime. Meanwhile, the damage caused fo the Bugle building during the Sentinel attack cost quite a bit to repair. To cover costs, the paper is laying all paid interns. Phil thinks he can pull a favor with his uncle, but he’s hit by the cuts. After seeing Spider-Man in action, Phil decides maybe it’s alright the Goblin gone. Also, apparently Freddie is good with machines now. Thirteen issues and we never quite figured out what Freddie’s deal was.
90% of this issue is people being sad. Mostly Phil since he can’t be a superhero anymore. But we get to see Lynn in tears because her dream career was in her grasp. And Ben gets to fire his own nephew. There’s a sequence of the interns all clearing out their desks that’s very effective. And at least one furious disgruntled employee. The issue does end with a going away party, where Phil laughs at Lynn for thinking the Goblin might have been sweet on her, because this book had to be weird about Lynn one last time.
It’s not a bad epilogue, even if it doesn’t present us with anything we couldn’t have already guessed. But the biggest low points are on the art side of things. Josh Hood is by no means a bad artist. But for whatever reason this issue, he struggled with his proportions. Exaggerating features to make your superhero poses more dynamic is a time honored superhero tradition. But if you don’t get the proportions just right, it looks like your guy just has a weird arm. There is a panel where Phil looks about 50 years old. But since it’s the first time we meet him in this issue, and he’s been moping about losing the Goblin mask, it still kind of works in a weird way. It’s hard times up in the Urich household.
But with the close of this issue, it’s easy to wonder what the series as a whole could have done differently. Thirteen issues isn’t an insignificant run. And from how some ideas were set up and established, it doesn’t seem like it was only meant as an event tie-in with ‘The Clone Saga.’ But its ties to ‘The Clone Saga’ definitely hurt it for sure. That massive story arc overshadowed anything else that could have come from that webbed corner of the 616. And oftentimes, this weird series about a good guy Goblin felt like an afterthought. The major issues of the series, some of the wonky panels and weird plotting, do feel like the creative team had their attention elsewhere.
Which is a shame, because there were interesting ideas in the book. Phil being someone trying to turn his life around, but still falling in with the wrong crowd is a great starting point. Him adopting a villain’s identity to finally do so is brilliant. And for whatever else silly DeFalco throws at us, he always had a firm grasp of Phil as a character. And the more introspective moments showed this. But after this issue, we get “The Osborn Journal,” explaining that Norman was behind the entire ‘Clone Saga.’ And after years of “Who’s the real Spider-Man?!” Marvel may not have wanted two Green Goblins gliding around.
Phil shows briefly in “Amazing Spider-Man,” having gone back to school, something he planned on doing in this series. He shows up in Vol. 2 of “The Runaways,” before his heel turn in spin-off series “The Loners.” Dan Slott brought him back with a few new identities for his Spider-run, before unceremoniously offing him in “Amazing” #797. Norman does the deed, fulfilling a promise he made in “The Osborn Journal.” And even as The Beyond Board gives Ben Reilly the spotlight in present day Marvel, Phil Urich still sits unused since Slott’s finished with him. If there is that one great script to push the heroic Goblin into the A-list, it doesn’t seem like Marvel’s rushing it to print. This may change as more creators look towards the 90s. But at the moment, there doesn’t seem to be a place for the Goblin of the “Now Generation.”
