Spider-Man: The Animated Series Episode Reviews

Enter the Green Goblin
Review by Stu, Media by Kolbar

---

Episode #31 - Enter The Green Goblin
Original Airdate: May 18th, 1996

While developing a new gas for the Kingpin to use as a weapon, a mistake triggers an explosion and Norman Osborn disappears in the chaos. A new villain, The Green Goblin appears and kidnaps all of Osborn's enemies. As Spider-Man investigates the origin of this new villain, the evidence begins to point to only one person...Harry Osborn!

Credits:
Story By: John Semper
Written By: Marty Isenberg and Robert Skir
Music Composed By: Shuki Levy and Kussa Mahchi
Animation Services By: Toyko Movie Shinsha (TMS)
Guest Starring: Christopher Daniel Barnes as Spider-Man/Peter Parker, Neil Ross as Norman Osborne/The Green Goblin, Ed Asner as J. Jonah Jameson, Roscoe Lee Brown as The Kingpin and Sara Ballantine as Mary Jane.

---

Review: A fan-favorite episode, but also divisive. This is where the purists thought the writers screwed up. There is the argument that the Green Goblin should have premiered before The Hobgoblin because, The Green Goblin premiered 20 years before Hobby did in the comics. And by the time Hobby showed up, Norman was long dead. Only not really, as Marvel, geniuses that they are, brought him back in the 1990's during the infamous "Clone Saga."

As faithful as this series liked to be with the Stan Lee/Steve Ditko/John Romita Jr. stories, I'm personally glad they didn't here. Norman was already a well developed well before he put on those silly goblin boots; he was a titan of industry, and an overworked one at that. I thought this series absoloutly nailed The Goblin too. Given how bad his character would later become in the comics at the time, I was just happy to see that this version was throughly entertaining. Neil Ross also brought the perfect voice to the character. He could seemlessly transfrom from Osborn back to Goblin. The split personality version of The Green Goblin has always been my favourite, even topping Mark Millar's awesome, ruthless Goblin during his run on Marvel Knights: Spider-Man (ighly recommended reading there, for those interested in the Spider-Man comics).

One of the things most noticeable about this episode is it's pacing, it's much slower than most of the episodes, especially the later season two episodes, which were usually told at a breakneck pace. The mystery is also well done, especially with Harry Osborn's attitude throughout the episode. He actually showed backbone! Barely any of the annoying characteristics he has were displayed here. Sadly, the same couldn't be said when he would become The Green Goblin.

The animation was gorgeous throughout; it almost matched "Night Of The Lizard." Very little repeated animation was used here; it was obvious someone in charge wanted a better-looking episode. The majority of The Goblin episodes were above average both in writing and animation. It seems as though someone on the staff had great love for him.

On a final note, it was an exceptional episode, which stood out as one of the best the series ever did. If this type of quality control had been carried out on all the series, it would've been so much better.

Screenshots: