My Top Favorite Norman Moments

Norman is my favorite gas station tweaker, which is why I'm compiling a list of the best Norman moments, as well as partially explaining why they're my favorites. This list will include ridiculously mundane feats as well as his stranger arcs.

Norman having a psychotic break and getting naked in the thunderbolts basement while fantasizing about being president

In this scene, Norman drops easily one of the funniest monologues I've ever heard:

"Always the same. I have to do everything myself.
Can't rely on anyone these days. All too busy reading about dying pop stars and iron mans pants. You two! Report to the quartermaster and get yourself a pair of dresses, on the double!
I always knew it'd come down to this. I always have to be the man.
Good old Norman Osborn. He’ll bail us out. He'll save the day. He'll be the hero.
Norman will make the hard choices, Norman has no feelings. Norman will make the girl pregnant and snap her neck in public. Norman wont mind. Norman will do what it takes. Norman will take care of everything, don’t you lift a damn finger to help or, god forbid, do your damn job. There's a space monster and a mad swordsman loose in the base– shall we trust the high security complement and the team of superhumans to deal with it? Oh, no. lets make a complete dog’s breakfast of the whole operation so Norman has to clean things up. I'm a fricking martyr to my own innate heroism, is what I am. Norman Osborn. America’s last hero. Thats what i am. One day I'm going to run the country, and do you think anyone will appreciate me then? Of course they won’t. Of course they won’t.  It'll be 'Excuse me Mister President Osborn sir, I don't have the strength to take out my own garbage, can you do it for me?' Thats what it'll be like. 'President Osborn! I'd love to be able to do anything competently, but my family tree looks like 2 yard sticks jutting out of a dead racoon.'
Hitler never had this kind of trouble, people just always did what he asked.. Must have been nice.
Ah I'm so glad I never washed this particular costume, it smells like death, blondes and victory. Maybe this could be my presidential uniform. Do presidents have uniforms? I suppose not. Still, since I'd be the president, I could do what I want, really. I'd rewrite all this superhuman legislation junk, I'll tell you that for nothing. 'Are you a self-proclaimed superhero?' 'aw, shucks, sir, i sure am a regular guy in bad underpants who fights crime without any understanding of how the world works, yes.' 'excellent, i send you now to a concentration camp where  you will be sterilised, lobotomised, tenderised, and pastuerised.' 'so says president goblin!'. Actually, that's a bit more doctor doom, isn't it? Still, the ideas sound.
Note to self: give naked dictation more often. The ideas seem to flow more freely.
Now, lets take care of business. And then, i think, i shall viciously beat some complete strangers at random. Theyre bound to have done something to deserve it at some point, after all.
Swordsman, swordsman.. What shall we do with you? Aside from kill you, of course. Of course I have to kill you. Its what the little people expect me to do. This is how I display my heroism."

You could tell that this wasn't just the classic "insane person spews nonsense" trope we're so used to, everything he said was so well articulated that you know he is all there, it just happens to be that all of his ideas are so deeply insane that he's clearly been off the wagon since the start.

Truly one of the most amazing ways they could've showed Norman snapping.

The Multiple Times He Straight Up Bit Someone

After Norman was arrested in Civil War: Front line #8 for shooting someone in broad daylight (he didn't do it, he swears!), they had to muzzle him because he bit the guy arresting him. He knew it wouldn't free him, and he never goes for a fatal bite, it's always just the hand or arm. He just did it to ruin the guy's day, I love that about him.

He did it again on the cover of Osborn: Evil Incarcerated 4. I Think my favorite part about this is you can tell he isn't even being arrested in this image, he's AT the trial he turned himself in to get (and, obviously, lost anyway). Something tells me that trial went down like The state of Georgia vs Denver Fenton Allen.

On the topic of Osborn: Evil Incarcerated, I also found it really funny that through the entire comic his waves looked nasty as hell and then they looked fine when he turned himself in. I very firmly believe he broke out just to get them re-done.

idk what to title this one

I love how this scene makes it very apparent that he doesn't know how to have a normal conversation so he just makes a 30Rock reference (which didn't land because everyone at the table was 12). Norman paraphrasing the scene so poorly seems to imply that its been a while since he saw that scene but it stuck with him for some reason anyway. He definitely seems like a Jack Donaghy fan.

Wiped sweat off Bullseye's face and then licked it

Self explanatory. Why did he choose this as his intimidation tactic? Why did it work?

This was a scene from Thunderbolts #110 and it definitely did its job setting a precedent for what kind of insanity to expect from Norman as leader of the T-bolts.

Became a Super-Adaptoid

A super-adaptoid is essentially someone who gains the power of anyone they make physical contact with, and it gets explained that Norman had become one so he could stand a change against the avengers after he got out of prison, but they explained this AFTER New Avengers (2010) #20 when he grabbed Luke Cage by the head and bowled him like a baseball. The few comics before they explained why he could do this were absolute gold, in my opinion. Sometimes I wish they never explained it- I enjoyed thinking he just did that because he wanted

to.

 

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