I was away for a couplea days and I come back to this! Hooray!
Harry is back, EXCELLENT! Now please, please, please don’t have him be a clone/a robot/a hallucination/the Chameleon and things will be good again!
(pssst, also, go check out harryosborn.net.)
Hey, remember how I was making an archive of all Harry Osborn’s appearances in comics complete with annotations and general ramblings? Turns out that’s the sort of project which kinda needs its own blog-
-and a few weeks ago I noted that the domain name harryosborn.net has NOT, in fact, been snapped up by Disney/Marvel/whoever. (the .com version was apparently claimed in 2006) So……. It’s now mine! WELL…
…I don’t know what happens next, because I never actually expected to get that far. Here’s harryosborn.net!
[You can read this post here or on harryosborn.net!]
Lots of things happen in this issue!
Harry and Peter chat 60s-style, except of course thanks to the sliding timeline none of this ever happened in the 60s! So we’ll have to imagine what era-appropriate sex symbol Harry “really” referenced at this point.
Ah this is all so sad to read fifty years on, knowing what will be changed and retconned.
Harry and Peter flirt with Gwen, Harry somewhat more successfully than Peter.
Oh here’s Kraven! (He was introduced in ASM #15 if I remember correctly so readers of the time would’ve already known him.) But more importantly: romantic entanglements! I still don’t know what the relationship between Harry and Gwen really was at this point because dating just seemed to be different in the 60s? I think these days we’d call it like, a non-exclusive casual relationship I guess.
Whether or not they ever hooked up hooked up is up to you really but honestly I imagine they probably did.
In these panels! Harry reminds us he’s rich, the boys are awestruck by the girls dressed up, Gwen looks jealous of MJ in the background there and wow there used to be a time where women could hang out wearing short skirts in the middle of the street and not get sexually harassed so much they went back inside?
Uh, one way in which the early Marvelverse differs from ours I guess.
Flash is on his way to the Vietnam war, a subject we’ve already tackled.
MJ and Gwen participate in a dance-off which the boys, ur, appreciate. Then in bursts a man wearing a dead animal and he wants Harry!
Flash attempts, with endearing bravado, to save Harry. Harry gets in a few punches but to no avail.
Ah, the days before Harry’s hatred for Spider-Man set in. Also awww, that panel of Gwen and Flash helping Harry is sweet. The Flash-Harry friendship is almost completely forgotten about these days but it was a nice one.
Huh Norman sure got there quickly.
Ahh if only Peter had tried that same technique with Gwen. (Too soon?)
Annnd there ya go, back in the days where Marvel could tell a story in one issue instead of six.
I have a feeling this story was given a retelling of sorts at some point in a much later comic, but we’ll deal with that when we get to it.
[You can read this post here or on harryosborn.net!]
Now at the end of the last one of these I said, since Vietnam is coming into the story now let’s find out what Stan Lee actually thought about the Vietnam War. And that’s the thing, that information is kinda hard to find. There’s an extent to which Lee has sort of I guess been a bit lionized over the years and plenty people think he was labelled more of a progressive than he really was. But I think he was progressive for his era, it’s just that that doesn’t always mean, “was good.” It means… well, it means they were progressive in the original sense of the word and that’s that. So that Washington Post article linked to there, here’s the cached version which isn’t behind a paywall, it says,
In the midst of the antiestablishment riots of 1968, he convened a panel for a failed talk-show pilot in which he repeatedly denounced radicalism; asserted that Black people needed to respect the law; and said the Vietnam War may have been immoral, but had to continue for the greater good.
But we don’t have any direct quotes from this so it’s still hard to pin down his exact opinion. Now on this Marvel site I found this quote from Lee:
Now it’s important that you bear in mind that this yarn [Iron Man] was written in 1963, at a time when most of us genuinely felt that the conflict in that tortured land really was a simple matter of good versus evil and that the American military action against the Viet Cong was tantamount to St. George’s battle against the dragons. Since that time, of course, we’ve all grown up a bit, we’ve realized that life isn’t quite so simple, and we’ve been trying to extricate ourselves from the tragic entanglement in Indochina.
And these comics we’re talking about here were written in 1967. Enough time for Lee to have grown up, I guess. And in the Stan’s Soapbox columns he apparently expressed hopes the troops would come home. Do any of the characters in these issues serve as his mouthpiece re Vietnam then? Does Harry? Well, let’s find out.
Here’s issue #44, where Harry and MJ meet for the first time. This one little scene and everything within it is going to have massive ripples throughout the Spidermanverse, many of which continue to this day, for better or worse. (Usually worse, let’s be honest.)
Harry is friendly here and Flash is…Flash, as has been the case for the past 4 or so issues. But the spectre of Vietnam is hanging over all this.
On to #45. Awww, all the boys have colour-coordinated their outfits, that’s nice.
Here we begin a long, nice tradition of Harry being super generous dude frequently prone to giving out jobs and, as we’ll see in a minute, apartments. Yes this lasted into the ’00s comics which I was always glad about, it’s a very intrinsic part of his character.
Now Harry appears to be dating MJ, or at least getting close to her. The first days of the Harry/MJ romance are actually something I don’t think ever got delved into that much in later comics, despite all the potential for great character moments there. The 1963 audience didn’t know it at this point and possibly neither did Stan Lee, but both are abused and damaged children frantically putting on masks.
This one little panel here sows the seeds for so much stuff that happens later. But more on that (and more on how even to this day MJ and her percieved shallowness is blamed for Harry’s downward spiral) in the future.
Now we’re in #46 and Harry has now secured Peter a job offer and a free apartment. Nice. Their friendship is cemented by this point, as you can tell, and it took under 15 issues! God I miss the much, much faster pace of Old Comics.
The gang exchange some wonderful 60s slang and plan a going-away party for Flash. “He’s the first one of the crowd to be drafted,” Harry says. But that makes me wonder, and bearing in mind that this is an era I know very little about except what I got via cultural osmosis… Did Harry and Peter expect to get draft notices too?
So, time to cram my brain with information about the draft system. The draft lottery didn’t start til 1969, so going back from that… If you were in full-time education, as Harry and Flash and Peter all are here, you didn’t neccessarily have to serve… if you were a good enough student.
These thousands weren’t selected at random. Instead, the Selective Service System (SSS) instituted a system of academic evaluation under which local draft boards would defer students based on intellectual ability. This ability was determined by two factors: class rank, and score on a national aptitude test known as the Selective Service Qualification Test. Undergraduates with a high class rank, or a test score above a certain cutoff, were draft-exempt. Everyone else could be sent to the front.
From here
So I suppose the implication in these Spider-Man comics is that Flash wasn’t a good enough student to avoid military service. Peter as a science genius I guess probably would have been. (Remember this panel from a couple issues back?)
But Harry… was Harry a fortunate son?
“It ain’t me, I ain’t me, I ain’t no millionaires’ son…”
But Harry probably was. Norman’s exact wealth wasn’t actually stated in the early days I think, but it’s safe to assume he’s pretty dang rich. And, says the New York Times (surprisingly one of the sources of Vietnam War draft info not outright blocked or paywalled in the UK, christ I hate the modern-day Internet)-
It was no coincidence that those men who already fit the middle-class mold of domestic masculinity — those men who were college students or teachers or scientists — received deferments.
It was a very classist, racist system. I feel like writing anything more along the lines of “So how did Spider-Man and his best friend avoid the draft?” trivalizes that in a way, so we’ll be back to business in a minute.
Now comics-wise Spider-Man: Life Story tackled Vietnam quite a bit, but due to the Marvel sliding timeline Vietnam just doesn’t factor into the Spider-Man story anymore. Flash didn’t fight, Iron Man wasn’t there. And I sort of think that’s a shame, and one of the reasons I have very conflicting feelings about ongoing comics as a medium. If you’re going to tackle very real, very bad things that happened in real life you should commit to them, you know?
So back to Harry. For whatever reason you want to have in your head – his status as a student, his father’s wealth, something else (it actually feels pretty in character, at least eventually, for him to be an objector?) – he’s not going to Vietnam and neither is Peter.
But of course, even that one specific part of the story is far from done.
Tom Holland‘s Spider-Man threequel has an official title. Our friendly neighborhood wall-crawler will return in Spider-Man No Way Home The third Spider-Man film finally has a title – SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME. The official announcement comes just hours after Tom Holland and his castmates threw us all into chaos after revealing a series of fake…
Official | Spider-Man 3 titled ‘Spider-Man No Way Home” — Future of the Force
It’s shaping up to be a very Spider-Man-y week. Congrats to them for managing to get the one sensible title I didn’t see anyone throw out as an idea!
Aggggges ago I watched the first season and a half of Ultimate Spider-Man. I generally liked it, I made a buncha cute gifs like this –
-but I zoned out of it because it was quite obviously for kids, lots of silliness and gross-out humour and stuff and I wasn’t a kid. (Far from it.) Then recently I started watching it again, got past the first season and a half and…it was really good from more or less that point on? Still very much for kids but a bit more mature, I guess. Niceeee.
Also a good antidote to the terribleness of the current comics! And I shall attempt to distract myself from them further by writing about this show instead. Since it’s partly about a superhero school let’s bring out a grading system!
Peter/Spider-Man: A terribly frustrating take on the character at first, it’s as if someone responded to the movie versions of Spidey not quipping enough by making every second thing that comes out of this Peter’s mouth a quip. No matter how inappropriate or OOC it is, gotta get those quips in there! Luckily this was less of an issue past season two or so. And I appreciate they kept Uncle Ben part of his story which is more than the bloody MCU managed. B-
Mary Jane: This Mary Jane isn’t too far away from her comic counterpart I guess, but it annoys me how adaptations never have her want to be an actress anymore. Here she wants to be a journalist which is cool and makes for some interesting episodes but… eh, performing is such an intrinsic part of her character and it bugs me a little how it’s appreciated I guess? B
Harry: Ah my precious son. This is a pretty good Harry but he has most of the edges rubbed off him, fair enough I guess since it would be really hard to make his issues family-friendly. My other main quibble is that he’s much too good-looking and Harry really isn’t supposed to be all that good-looking, despite the actors who’ve played him over the years. Anyway I’m giving him a high grade partly to get the taste of the aforementioned recent comics outta my mouth, so sue me A
Aunt May: Okay honestly I judge pretty much all Spider-Man adaptations by how they do Aunt May. If she’s not the most important person in Peter’s life, if she isn’t constantly either there or being mentioned, you have done a Bad Spider-Man Adaptation. But this one achieved all that and made her funny and cool while still being (gasp) old so A+
Nick Fury: This Nick Fury locks people up without trial, employs what are basically child soldiers and spies on said child soldiers without their permission, which is yikes a- F
Miles: Oh this Miles is so adorable and I just want him safe with his mother. Please stop calling him “Kid Arachnid” though. A
Flash: Wow after season one they ramped up Flash’s character development and made him actually really engaging! Funny too. Yes that’s how you do it. A
Spider-Man’s various other amazing friends: Gosh there were so many. I loved the Scarlet Spider arc even though I’m not in the least bit familiar with him. Really loved the Spider-Man Noir stuff, man I gotta read those comics? A
Doc Ock: I’m impressed that they managed to have Doc Ock change appearance like 4 times and eventually end up looking like the version everyone remembers. I kinda liked the creepy watery look he had at the beginning though? Also his heel-face-turn right in the very final episode was a bit silly but that sort of thing is what Spider-Man’s all about so I can’t fault it. B
Norman: Honestly the comics have never been particularly consistent with Norman so you can do pretty much whatever with him in adaptations as long as you include “corrupt businessman/bad father/Green Goblin” in there. This one’s a bit too nice (post Goblin cure) for me but hey he’s hardly gonna be going around murdering girlfriends in this. B
Voice acting: I didn’t know some of these until I looked up the full cast list but this show had [deep breath] Mark Hamill, Tom Kenny, Ashley Eckstein, Donald Glover, Seth Green, Terry Crews, George Takei, Milo Ventimiglia and MANY MORE in it, which is pretty awesome, A+
Jokes: Honestly I watched this one particular episode during the first go-through but to this very day I can’t hear the words “booby traps” without mentally hearing Deadpool pipe up with “Haha! You said ‘traps’!” so A
Puns: They did a whole episode with Howard the Duck and a sea monster and no-one, NO-ONE said “Release the quacken.” B-
[You can read this post here or on harryosborn.net!]
Well the awfulness of the current comics shows no sign of going away anytime soon, so let’s jump back into this! Where we left off, Harry’s father had just overcome his first bout of supervillainy, but it would be faaaaaar from the last.
Here’s Harry’s very brief appearance in #41. Looks like his school bully days are behind him thanks to the previous story’s events! Meanwhile, Peter’s getting interested in Gwen.
#42 shows Harry defending Peter to Flash! Hooray for character development! Also Peter loves his motorbike a little too much.
Harry and Gwen’s relationship is a bit hard to pin down during this point, are they actually dating in the non-exclusive way or just friends?
And here’s Harry’s last appearance in these three comics. You’ll note that once more he sticks up for Peter. But now we’ve turned a corner into the real world and a still very relevant era of American history, the Vietnam war. Now I admit I don’t know much about it, being neither American or Vietnamese, but I know the basics. Flash has already been drafted, and these three panels rather make it sound like Harry is distressed at the possibility of Peter too being made to go to war.
Stan Lee’s thoughts about Vietnam I don’t actually know, but I’m gonna see if I can find out before the next one of these posts. I’d be interested in that. Harry is absolutely correct here in that a young man forced to join the military and kill people in a war is nothing remotely humorous.
Nick Spencer’s New Spider-Man Twist Literally Demonizes The Mentally Ill
I’m very pleased to announce I just got an article about Spider-Man, Harry Osborn and mental illness published at The Mary Sue! It’s, uh, not positive about Nick Spencer’s writing.
I hope you enjoy it. There are some nice comments on there, including one that actually vocalised something I’ve been thinking for a while – for all the terribleness of this storyline, the backlash to it did highlight how unexpectedly beloved Harry is among Spider-Man fans. (Maybe the real Harry was the friends we made along the way.)
…Or that’s how it felt? Like my first thoughts weren’t “Wow a load of new toys!” but “How the hell am I meant to find time to watch THAT MUCH STUFF, especially if I want to keep up with the basic MCU story?” I’m getting old.
That being said…
Note that all these announcements happened around 1am my time.
[You can read this post here or on harryosborn.net!]
Here we are, the fallout from last week! The Green Goblin took his mask off and revealed himself to be… Peter’s high-school bully’s friend’s dad. Not exactly a “No, I am your father” level revelation… well, not yet anyway…
Peter begins by slagging off Harry, even though they’re teetering more to being almost-friends at this point. Oh sure he’s stalling for time! But I suspect in-universe Peter regretted those words once he came to love Harry.
Reading some of these lines in the present day, knowing the rest of the story, you just gotta go
or is that just me?
Here’s baby Harry, wearing the Spider-Man colours to boot. Norman tells this story as if he was a perfectly good father temporarily sidetracked, and maybe that’s what Stan Lee planned back then, but in the modern day comics this is… very much not the case.
See that red bike there? That bike will many years later play a starring role in a story detailing Norman’s abuse of Harry during this period.
“I couldn’t be bothered with him” could be the tagline for a heavy book titled “Norman Osborn’s Guide To Parenting.”
Many years later it would be retconned so Harry was responsible for the explosion in question. Which makes his thought bubble here kinda make no sense, except for the “It’s all my fault” bit.
“How did someone like me ever have a sniveling weaking of a son like you?” is the other, probably even more accurate tagline for Norman Osborn’s Guide To Parenting.
Poor Harry. It feels like that nurse in the background is looking on like, “hmm maybe someone should intervene to help that kid.” (ur, yeah.)
Norman just casually designing his supervillain suit to match that one pink satchel he already has.
One fight later:
He has… AMNESIA! This would be a get-out-of-jail card deployed by Spidey writers for quite a while.
“It would break his heart!” Told you Peter was SUCH A LOVELY KID, he barely knows Harry at this point and his initial impressions were nothing but negative.
It was not.