We’re back fo the big finish. It’s kind of crazy that Glenn Greenberg was the only one swinging for the fences while the books went into an obvious holding pattern for the big event that will close out this era. As we’ve seen, the other titles are mostly treading water, but this is 2 of Spidey’s biggest villains of all time. One one of them is about to unmask our hero.
This is a very cliche reversal, but it works a little better here than usual since we can assume Norman wouldn’t want anyone else to know Peter’s secret. Hobby rips the door off the bathroom and they drag Daniel out. Then Hobby wraps the unconscious Spider-Man up in his own webbing, and the Goblins take off with their captives. And Daniel has passed out, so Green Goblin can’t demand the location of the journal, which I’m pretty sure doesn’t exist. Pretending to have Osborn’s journals is a weirdly common gambit down the years. Harry did it to lure out Hobgoblin in 260, Betty did it in Hobgoblin Lives!. Works every time on any Goblin of your choice!
I don’t know what all future writers could do with Kingsley knowing Norman knows who Spider-Man is, but I don’t recall any kind of follow up about it.
Don’t worry, Betts, he’s on it. Well, sort of. He’s waking up in Obsorn’s clutches, and embarrassed to find himself trapped in his own web. He’s back just in time for Osborn to reveal he knows there’s no journal.
Luke Ross’s action is still too weird. Cartoony. He’s trying, but it’s more like Looney Tunes characters fighting than supervillains. Look at Osborn’s wacky reaction down there. Green goblin zaps back, but Norman calls him off, angry enough to take care of this himself. He leaps up onto Hobby’s glider as Spider-Man reaches the point where the plot demands he break free of the trap.
“Lil Blood & Guts?” That odd, downturned, clawed hand gesture is such a McFarlane thing. I should know, I integrated it into my own library of Spider-Man imagery when drawing for decades. Green Goblin goes flying into the other two, and then Spider-Man leaps over them to… unmask him. He was just so worried about Daniel. He does unmask Green Goblin, but can’t see his face in the fire and smoke. So he reverts to saving Daniel, and does so, leaping them both out of the blaze and onto the street in front of a taxi.
For some reason, Daniel is still outside, being questioned by a cop and treated by a medic, and begging to be taken anywhere else. In the fire, Norman just… walks out of the fight remarkably easily, leaving Spider-Man and Hobgoblin to their who-knows-how-many-th battle in a burning building. Norman’s sweating it because he has no idea how he’s getting out of this one without arousing suspicion, or worse, until he trips over his lackey’s mask.
Some firefighters burst in, and Spider-Man has to divert his attention saving them from a collapsing wall, which comes down on him, instead.
Later that night, we find MJ patching up Peter’s wounds and he beats himself up for not accomplishing anything, until she reminds him of all the people he saved today. Don’t worry, Peter, you couldn’t have accomplished anything, there’s a big crossover coming. But also…
Of course the world hasn’t heard the last of Hobgoblin, but he does end up taking a remarkably long break. In fact, Kingsley doesn’t really appear again until 2012! Fourteen years out of the limelight is almost as long as Norman’s “break.” But I guess with Norman back, maybe people didn’t think having multiple Goblins running around served much of a purpose. Even after he came back, after some initial scraps with Spider-Man, he tended to show up in other peoples’ books afterward. But anyway. Stern kind of got to work on an ending for his guy. That’s interesting. And now it’s time to get down to the business of ending the Vol. 1 era.