What is going on with Norman Osborn and why does it suck?

Norman Osborn is marvels favorite safety net to fall back on when they need someone to ruin peter’s day, he’s perfect for any sort of complication because his drive is oftentimes just “I'm strong and you're weak so I hate you” put through about 5 different filters to have political or psychological implications. …so why did they take that away?

You might notice our new hero ‘the Gold Goblin’ making a fair amount of appearances all throughout modern marvel comics, and this was caused by an event that can be traced back to an arc from the 2020 Amazing Spider-Man comics. 

In ASM  (2018)  issue 50, Norman has a run-in with the character known as the sin-eater. Real name Stanley Carter, sin-eater became obsessed with the idea of cleansing the world of sin. Though I refuse to read into any of his appearances that don't coincide with Norman’s, his powers can be summed up like this:

Stanley shoots bad men with his magic shotgun

Bad men die 

The bad man then comes back a good man, cleansed of sin (which, as far as I can tell, is defined the same as in a biblical context) and plagued with guilt about their previous life.

During his encounter with Carter, Norman proposes an alliance, and after being denied this alliance, calls him out for being a deluded zealot being manipulated by Kindred (who was later revealed to be Harry). Stan, still focused on his mission of cleansing the world from sin, shoots Norman in the chest and leaves him to go tell kindred the work is done.

Though the exact ‘rules’ of how sin works aren't really explained well, Norman goes on, free of his sin and overwhelmed with guilt and the sudden revelation that he has to save his son.

I'm not going to summarize the whole comic but I will bring up parts of it periodically.

After the last remains fiasco that left harry dead and in the middle of some very convoluted ret-cons, Norman rebuilds Oscorp and swears to stay away from goblining or gliders, (though later accepts his duty as a hero and rebuilds himself, nicknamed by the public “Gold Goblin”).

Given his own mini, Norman confesses that despite being cleansed of sin, the guilt leeches into every factor of his life- the memories of his past actions haunt him and he can't help but hate himself. Distraught, he works harder than he ever has to save as many lives as possible in hopes that somehow it’ll make up for everything he’s done.

Normans thoughts were explored quite well, and i did enjoy seeing that being cleansed of sin didn’t magically re-wire his thought patterns and make norman Not Norman- he hates Owen because he thinks he’s incompetent and weak- he faces Kafka and his first thought isn’t just ‘stop her’, it’s ‘kill her’ (and he would have gone through with it if The Ghost Of Schizophrenic Past hadn't told him to cut the shit). It was good to see there were at least some reasonable aspects of the way the comic was written.

Unfortunately, even though I enjoyed the execution quite a lot, I hated what it was at its core. 

It gets revealed at the end of the 2nd issue that when Norman was cleansed of his sin, they went into Kafka and she became the Queen Goblin- the total manifestation of Norman's evil. What does that even mean? The comic goes on to insinuate that the sins are eating her alive and that they are slowly killing her, but how? She isn't sick, she’s just violent and has adapted Norman's knack for murder as a solution to a problem. There's a couple times where they almost outright state that she got his memories, too, and she clearly blames him for what he did and is just DYING to return those sins to him, but what does that even mean in a literal sense? 

In the end of the comic, Norman panics and kills her to get her away from Peter and then breaks down sobbing, insisting he had to. This weird gripe continues in Amazing Spider-man (2022) #32, when Kafka, who came back because someone at Ravencroft didn’t cremate her, gets Kraven (who just piped her, idk why that was clarified but alright) to help her “imbue the sins in a spear” (????) and plans to stab Norman to give them back to him. This plan fails, Peter gets the sins, and then we get The Spider Who Gobs. 

….what?

It becomes increasingly obvious that none of the writers have actually agreed upon what it means to “carry Norman's sins” and they're just frantically re-establishing the boundaries so they can keep crossing them. After an underwhelming and overhyped 3 comic saga, Norman sets the spear to steal-sins mode (WHAT??) and stabs Peter with it, but just as Norman expected, the sins return to their rightful owner. Alone in the confines of his office, Norman stifles a giggle. 

My issue with this is not only that the sins were clearly never supposed to be a “tangible” thing, but even after they've broken this golden rule, they can't stick with whatever bullshit constraints they established in literally the comic RIGHT before it!

Let me get this straight-

Norman gets his sins sapped from his body. The memories remain, but guilt looms over him.

Kafka receives these ‘sins’ and along with it, his memories, and loses her guilt. The sins are agreed upon by both parties to be ‘eating away at her like acid’ despite any symptoms manifesting.

The sins get put in a SPEAR, a physical object, he gets stabbed with it, and instead of inheriting Norman's memories, he just wants to get revenge on everyone who personally wronged him.

Norman RE-OBTAINS the sins but experiences no sudden violent urges, instead quietly giggling and then thinking “oh man I don't wanna be evil!!” and then just not being evil.

Now, I understand that sometimes interpolating science fiction with supernatural concepts can be rocky, and implying new rules is necessary sometimes to introduce these ideas and personalise them into a story YOU want to write, but at least try and stick to the rules you're writing! Obviously, it was ambitious to say the least for me to expect something good from the already over-complicated origin of Norman's new-found goodness, but the fact that it somehow got worse was astonishing. They’re bringing back the green goblin, if not in the comic that releases almost immediately after this, then the one after that. Everyone expected this from Zeb ‘put-the-toys-back-in-the-box’ Wells, but so far they’ve failed to successfully convey how those sins have actually resurfaced in Norman. The closest recognizable attempt I saw was in ASM 37, when Norman walks into his office at the business that HE HAS TO MANAGE, sees REK-RAP, tells Peter to do his damn job and stop bringing freaks into work (quite politely and logically at that), and then leaves. Zeb Wells is so incompetent he accidentally just wrote a grounded and reasonable response to the situation while he was trying to show Norman being an asshole. 

In conclusion, Norman good character writers bad writers I hate modern comics