The Superior Spider-Man: Goblin Nation

/ Alex Good

The Superior Spider-Man: Goblin Nation

As you know from my previous reviews of a couple of the Superior Spider-Man Team-Up collections, I’m a fan of the character. In brief, he’s a version of Spider-Man where Otto Octavius has taken over Peter Parker’s body and thus the identity of Spider-Man, creating a new and improved (“superior”) webslinger. The original Peter Parker had apparently died, but in fact his consciousness is still floating around in the SSM’s head, and in this issue he finally emerges triumphant as Octavius relinquishes control back to him so that he (the real Peter Parker) can save his (Octavius’s) girlfriend.

Did you follow all that? It doesn’t really matter. The main plotline has the Green Goblin (or the Goblin King, who is Norman Osborn having had plastic surgery to look like one of his corporate underlings) and the Goblin Nation (a bunch of characters turned into goblin freaks by the goblin serum) trashing NYC. The Goblin King knows that Spider-Man is now a cosplaying Doc Ock and offers him an alliance (as junior partner) but nobody with a name like Octavius is going to agree to play second fiddle to a little green guy so they end up fighting each other. Meanwhile, Spider-Man 2099 has time-traveled back to help out and J. Jonah Jameson, the mayor of New York, has unleashed his army of robot Spider-Slayers to kill Spidey because you know Jameson just has a hate on for him.

Did you follow that? I’ll admit, I had a hard time with it. And there’s more going on, including a psychomachia in Peter Parker’s head and a battle between the corporate entities Parker Industries and Oscorp/Alchemax. I thought this struggle between the wannabe tech bros to be an angle that had more potential, but as this synopsis has already made clear there’s plenty enough going on.

Probably too much. If you’re not up on this iteration of the Spiderverse then you’re probably going to be lost with regard to all of the supporting characters. I know I was. And I wasn’t impressed with the Goblin King’s ambition to take over all the crime in New York City. Why not just focus on growing Oscorp and take over the world? What would Elon do? OK, probably try to take over NYC. But you know what I mean.

I didn’t like this one as much as I did the other Superior Spider-Man titles I’ve read, but it’s still a better-than-average comic and shouldn’t disappoint the fans who wanted to see Peter Parker come back. I just wasn’t missing him that much.

Graphicalex

13 thoughts on “The Superior Spider-Man: Goblin Nation”

  1. I read most of the Superior comics and thought this was a great finale. But as you say, at the time at least, I was up to date with all that Spiderverse stuff.

    I got the Amazing Spiderman that came immediately after this. I thought it was okay at best, but many people think even less of it because it gives quite “horny” vibes with the new character, Silk.

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    • Yeah, I liked the character of SSM but it was an idea with a shelf life. I think they wrapped things up here about as well as they could have. I liked the idea of a pissing contest between the Goblin and Doc Ock and thought that might have been developed more.

      Peter Parker has never been a character I could relate to, even though that was always his main selling point (the regular teen, not Clark Kent or whatever). My reading of the Spider-Man comics has been hit and miss. I guess I read him the most back in the ’80s and some of them weren’t bad.

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