Just at the tail end of it, it looks like the Summer of Symbiotes has caught up to me: I actually enjoyed two different symbiote comics this month. A record! The reality where I wholeheartedly enjoyed Red Goblin was rare, but somehow it pulled through. Incredible, really.
Most of Red Goblin’s success is thanks to none other than Nick Spencer, amazingly, who decided it was time for Norman Osborn to get a new opportunity at being a hero. Since then, Zeb Wells has done great stuff with him in Amazing Spider-Man, and he Norman got his own mini (that I didn’t read) to celebrate the occasion.
It’s been a great time, generally, with all the complications from the many lives he’s ruined getting dredged up so he can be sad about them, and also so he can try to do good despite his past. Which is why posing his newfound forgiveness against his traumatized grandson-with-a-symbiote was such a fun, cruel, and great idea.
Marvel Comics
The book gets right to that juicy stuff too, with the first issue really focusing in on Normie’s conflicted feelings about his namesake, both vigilante and familial. It might be fair to say the angle is overly obvious, or that the point gets hammered a little too hard, but I think it’s the right amount, personally, and the combination of Normie, Red Goblin, Norman, and the goblin gang makes for a strong thematic throughline for the creative team to pull at.
I wouldn’t have thought that Red Goblin could keep me interested for longer than five issues, but not only is its core concept keeping me around for whatever else is coming, I’m gonna read an event centered on Carnage for it, something I’d disagree with on moral grounds a year ago. Good stuff; great, even.
Marvel Comics
What might be the most impressive thing to me is how Paknadel handles writing Norman. Many, if not most, comic writers struggle with writing children. They almost always come off as babyish, and if not that, then robotic and inhuman. Very rarely does anyone find the balance of immature and innocent in a way that isn’t just annoying. He feels like Marvel’s Calvin, if Calvin got to wear a semi-murderous red baby symbiote.
Nailing a good voice for Normie does a lot to make Red Goblin’s larger themes land too. If you sell him, you can sell Norman’s effect on him, and go crazy with the tension between and around them. The book is able to do this early on, which makes the rest of the book able to coast on that energy. The team has done a great job executing an already solid premise.
Marvel Comics
As much as I do think Paknadel nailed his job here, Jan Bazaldua deserves her flowers here, as she put up some incredible work. The last few years has seen her really blow up by becoming one of Marvel’s Stormbreakers, but instead of getting a big project that she really got to cook on, she’s seemed to have been working as a fill-in artist on other books that already had their defining artist. I’ve said for a while that I wanted to see what she could do on big book that she could make her own, and this feels like a step toward that, though the coming Captain Marvel series feels more like it.
Still, she got to really own this book, and it’s impressive work. Her action is what shines especially well, and she really gets to show off here. It’s particularly reminiscent of Cammuncoli’s work, which is a fun line to draw, when he drew so much of Amazing Spider-Man. Bazaldua’s Normie is also just wonderful, with him somehow looking both cute and creepy, which perfectly sets and regulates the tone.
Red Goblin is not a book I was primed to like; it was something I expected to tolerate at best. Instead, it’s a great and interesting use of a status quo I’m fond of. I’m excited to see what comes next for lil Normie and big Norman.
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