InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "She wore a yellow ribbon."

cyberghostface (cyberghostface) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-09-13 00:02:00

Entry tags:

char: green goblin/norman osborn, creator: mark buckingham, creator: paul jenkins, title: peter parker spider-man

Norman Osborn's Childhood

I figured with Norman's current status as Official Bastard of the Marvel Universe, it might be time to take a trip down memory lane...

This one comes from Peter Parker Spider-Man #25. I may post the larger story later as it's pretty good IMO.

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cyberghostface
2009-09-13 04:53 am UTC (link)

I still don't get how anyone goes from "I had a fear of the dark" to "KillKILLkill."

Again, this isn't so much A to B as it is D to L. This was one moment in Osborn's childhood, and was referenced because he was trying to get Peter to accept the darkness, but it was never intended to be the defining moment for Norman's psychosis (although it probably didn't help much).

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jlroberson
2009-09-13 08:54 am UTC (link)

But in no way does it excuse, nor is it sufficient to explain, anything he is as an adult. And increasingly I do not care that he is mentally ill--so was Manson, so was Richard Speck, and so forth. The question is not whether he is mad, it's a question of whether he understands he's doing harm to others or not.

He does, and he enjoys it. So insanity and abuse count for nothing in the face of what he does, and has done.

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	janegray 2009-09-13 11:46 am UTC (link)
	Motto. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	cyberghostface 2009-09-13 01:32 pm UTC (link)
	I've never 'excused' his actions here--all I've said is that this one moment isn't the one moment that made Norman who he is. (Reply to this) (Parent)

felinephoenix
2009-09-13 04:53 pm UTC (link)

No one's saying it forgives Norman for anything. Sure, that's a big problem in storytelling, giving the villain a bad childhood in order to let them off the hook, but that's not what this story was about.

It was about seeing what makes Norman tick and whether he could get Peter to embrace his ideals (spoiler: he doesn't, but he comes far too close for Pete's comfort). Maybe this humanises Norman a bit, but I don't think humanising = forgiving. If anything, I find Norman the most frightening when he's like this, a more human sort of evil than the way he's normally written.

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cleome45
2009-09-13 06:16 pm UTC (link)

I don't know where people are getting "explanation" = "excuse," either. Then again, I haven't read the whole story line.

Fleshing out a villain's background is a call for reason, I think. It's the idea that nothing a person does, however heinous and unforgivable, happens "just because."

Some readers like to see that, and some don't, I guess. I probably tend toward liking it because I was raised by a mystery fanatic, and the whole point of most old-school mysteries is to impose order on an otherwise chaotic-looking universe.

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