Now we come to the crux of this Spectacular Spider-Man run. Vermin and The Child Within are the starting point, but at the end of the day, the heart of these twenty-three issues is Peter Parker and Harry Osborn. Spider-Man and the Green Goblin. Best friends and mortal enemies. Which will they be when the dust settles? Does the conflict with this Green Goblin have to end the same way as Peter's conflict with the first Goblin—Harry's father Norman? Or can these two men confront their demons and break the cycle?
I've had several best friends throughout my life. Sometimes they move away and we lose touch. Sometimes we become different people as we grow up and drift apart. I'm happy to say that, thankfully, none of them ever became a super-villain and tried to kill me. Because of that, I feel like I both can and can't relate to Peter and Harry's relationship. I was one of the first of my group of friends to get married and have kids. That absolutely changed my dynamic with the group as a whole. Harry has little Norman, whom everyone calls "Normie." Coincidentally, that's the one thing he'll never be, having that name in that family… Peter and Mary Jane don't have children. So there's automatically a gap between these two families. Add to that Peter's secret identity and the truth of just how broken Harry really is, and you have a recipe for tragedy. Which is just what we ultimately get.
Even though I keep calling them friends, Peter and Harry are really more like brothers. They've survived secret lives, drug addictions, more death than anyone their ages should ever have to deal with—and they're still standing. A bit worse for wear, as we learn throughout this run, but still standing nonetheless. Because of all they've been through, their bond is probably closer than that of some sibling relationships. Which makes it all the more tragic when the ghost of Norman Osborn and his "style" of parenting rears its ugly head and drops a Pumpkin Bomb in the middle of everything. Two families' lives were shattered because of the actions of one man who had been dead and buried for years. Relationships that will literally never recover. And worst of all, passing these sins onto the next generation, ensuring that the cycle will just continue on.
J.M. DeMatteis doesn't shy from delving deep into the characters' psyches throughout this run. The first time Harry confronts Peter as the Green Goblin, he uses one of Norman's gases on him that makes Peter face his traumas. Being buried alive by Kraven is first, but it goes back further than that. Peter ends up confronting his feelings of abandonment coming from his parents’ dying when he was a young boy. It takes some time, and a literal breakdown, but Harry actually ends up doing Peter a favor. When Peter tries to do the same for his friend by reminding him what a horrible person Norman Osborn really was, Harry doubles down on his insistence that his father was a good man and Spider-Man is the villain. But even still, when it comes down to it, Harry can't pull the trigger. Not yet. Instead, he leaves Peter with the knowledge that his best friend knows his greatest secret and could choose to reveal it at any time. How can he or Mary Jane be safe when Spider-Man's greatest enemy is literally living in the apartment below them? And what about Aunt May? Harry Osborn wouldn't dare hurt her—but what about the Green Goblin?
Although the heart of this run is the conflict between Spider-Man and the Green Goblin, we take several detours along the way. Some of them, such as the Funeral Arrangements arc, where the Vulture learns he is dying and becomes obsessed with settling old scores, or a short arc featuring the Puma and delving into how hard it can be not to surrender to rage, fit the central themes of trauma and legacy. Others, like team-ups with Frog-Man and the original five X-Men, are notably lighter in tone and help to break up the heavier concepts of the run. But after every little detour, we always find ourselves coming back to Vermin or Harry Osborn. Harry descends deeper and deeper into madness, ultimately terrorizing not only Peter's family but also his own. He starts imparting "words of wisdom" to young Normie that sound like the kinds of things that Norman would have said, and before long, you can see the effect they're having on the child. After a disturbed and macabre "dinner party" for both the Parkers and the Osborns, Harry ends up institutionalized. But it's clear he's already too far gone. It all comes to a head in the final proper issue of the run, #200. This is where we witness the definitive confrontation between Spider-Man and Harry Osborn Green Goblin.
