Character: Harry Osborn/Green Goblin II
From: Spider-Man comics
Representation: Mental illness, drug addiction, abuse survivor
Their Importance: Harry’s a character I’m intensely grateful exists in the form he does. Back in 1971, when there were very strict rules about what could and couldn’t be shown in comics, the Spider-Man writers decided to do a story on the dangers of drugs. Peter Parker’s best friend/the Green Goblin’s son Harry would be the character pressured into them. The Comics Code Authority said no. Stan Lee and company published it anyway.
The result ended up taking Harry places I’m sure no-one envisioned back then. A couple years after the initial storyline he relapsed, to the horror of his friends, and was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Directly on the heels of that came the infamous story where Gwen Stacy died at the hands of Harry’s father, and then everything just plain sucked in-universe for a while.
But (and this is condensing several decades’ worth of stuff down!) Harry, even when wearing the costume of the Green Goblin, was pretty much always treated sympathetically. In 1991 came the very hard-hitting and very very good The Child Within, which detailed just how much abuse Harry suffered at the hands of his father and how much that tied into his mental state. [Warning if you seek it out: it also involves sexual abuse, although not in relation to Harry.] In that story Harry is goaded to murder Peter by a hallucination of his father, but he can’t bring himself to, which of course says a lot about him.
Again, condensing decades of history down, Harry committed some more acts of supervillainy before finding redemption saving Peter from certain death and then dying himself. But, this being comics, in 2007 he came back! His mental health issues and addiction issues aren’t gone, but are still being portrayed sympathetically! Four for you, Marvel writers. You go, Marvel writers.
I love Harry so much. As a mentally ill person (though I don’t have schizophrenia) it was so great to see a mentally ill person in a comic have ups and downs and lashings-outs and still have heroic moments and loving friends. One of my favourite moments in any Spider-Man comic is when Peter overhears someone at a party call Harry a “blithering psychopath”, so overturns the punch bowl on their head as revenge.
Issues: This all tends to get a bit lost in adaptations of the Spider-Man story. The 2002-2007 movies made a concession to it at least by having Harry become an alcoholic and hear voices in his head, but The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is generally considered a bit of an ableist mess when it comes to both Harry (who kills Gwen in this version) and Jamie Foxx’s Electro. It remains to be seen what the new MCU Spider-Man movies will do if/when they feature him.
Thank you to @sarah531 for the write up!