Merge:Harry Osborn

Harry Osborn is a Marvel Comics character, both one-time friend and foe to Spider-Man. Created by writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko, he first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #31 (December 1965).

Son of industrialist Norman Osborn, secretly the supervillain the Green Goblin, Harry became the unlikely friend and college roommate of the nerdy Peter Parker, secretly the superhero Spider-Man. Harry was a self-destructive young man, who used drugs to overcome an inferiority complex instilled by his father.

After witnessing his father's apparent death in a battle with Spider-Man, Harry swore vengeance on the hero. After discovering that Peter and Spider-Man were one and the same, he became psychotic and took on the mantle of the Green Goblin.

Harry managed to return to sanity for a while, even marrying and taking over his father's company. Before long, he was experimenting with Norman's chemicals again and was soon menacing Peter as the Green Goblin once more. Harry, insane with power after ingesting a new version of his father's superhuman strength formula, overcame Spider-Man and trapped the hero in a house rigged to explode. However, Harry's old personality managed to break through, and he saved both Mary Jane and Spider-Man. However, the chemicals Harry had drank were toxic, and were slowly killing him.

After confessing to Spider-Man that Peter would always be his best friend, Harry Osborn died.

Biography
Harry was born in New York to industrialist Norman Osborn and his wife Emily. Unfortunately, the circumstances of Harry's birth weakened Emily, and she died after several years of illness. Heartbroken, Norman became a cold and unloving father, either dismissing Harry or lashing out at him in fury. Harry would spend the rest of his life trying desperately to earn his father's approval.

When Harry graduated high school, he enrolled in Empire State University. Among the wealthiest students in the school, Harry soon became one of the most popular faces in the school, despite his aloof manner. He soon formed a clique of rich, popular students around him. One of these students was the lovely Gwen Stacy, whom Harry had known since high school. Gwen soon became intrigued with a new student, a bookish, studious fellow named Peter Parker. Harry took a dislike to Parker, as he resented the amount of attention he was getting from Gwen, and he assumed that the reason Peter was so standoffish was because of snobbery. After confronting Parker, however, Harry discovered that Peter was painfully shy and worried about his ailing aunt, May. Despite this rocky early start, Harry and Peter became friends, eventually sharing a luxury apartment.

What Harry didn't realize was that Peter was the superhero Spider-Man, and that he had twice battled his father, who had become the Green Goblin in an accident while attempting to create a super-serum. When the Goblin discovered Spider-Man's identity and captured him, he revealed his own identity to Peter. Horrified that his greatest enemy was his best friend's father, Peter's loyalties were torn during their battle. However, Osborn then fell onto an electric transformer and the resulting shock removed all memory of being the Green Goblin. Spider-Man removed the Goblin's costume and equipment, hoping it was the end of the Goblin menace.

However, Norman's memories would resurface from time to time and he would periodically battle Spider-Man, only to lose his memories again when the fight was over. These were difficult times for Harry. Having experimented with drugs since his teenage years, Harry gradually began experimenting with harder substances, which affected his mental stability and relationships with his friends. Spider-Man used this to his advantage on one occasion when, in battle with the Green Goblin, he was able to stop the fight by showing Norman his son's emaciated condition, brought on by an accidental cocaine overdose. The sight shocked Norman so much that it brought him back to sanity for what was to be the last time.

It wasn't long after, though, that stress caused Norman to become the Green Goblin again. Harry's life had fallen apart. His relationship with Peter's friend Mary Jane Watson had come to an end when she dumped him, fed up with his self-destructive lifestyle. A disconsolate Harry turned to drugs and suffered an LSD overdose. He survived, but this tragedy, compounded by imminent bankruptcy, drove the Green Goblin over the edge. He kidnapped Gwen as bait for Spider-Man, and then threw her off the George Washington Bridge. When Peter pulled her back up with his webbing, she was already dead. A vicious battle between Spider-Man and the Green Goblin ensued, with Peter barely able to control himself from killing the villain. The Goblin then directed his goblin glider to impale Spider-Man, but the wall-crawler jumped out of the way, and the Goblin was impaled through the chest himself, and seemingly killed. Peter was wracked with guilt and sorrow, but took comfort in the fact that the Green Goblin was finally dead.

The new Green Goblin
However, Harry had secretly witnessed the battle. Wanting to protect his father's identity, he stripped Norman's body of the Green Goblin costume and hid it. Blaming Spider-Man for his father's "murder," Harry swore vengeance. Having inherited his father's company, Harry managed to get the business back in shape as he planned his revenge. One day, to his shock, he found a Spider-Man costume in Peter's apartment, and realized that his best friend was the man he blamed for his father's death. Using his father's old equipment, Harry confronted Peter as the new Green Goblin.

Not wanting to hurt Harry, Peter avoided fighting his old friend. Eventually Harry was knocked unconscious and taken into police custody. There he raved that he was the true Green Goblin and Peter Parker was Spider-Man, but was dismissed as a lunatic. He was put in the care of criminal psychologist Dr. Bart Hamilton, who extracted the secrets of the Green Goblin from Harry through hypnosis, and buried the knowledge deep with Harry's mind. However, this was not altruistic on Hamilton's part - he then raided one of Harry's hideouts and became the third Green Goblin, hoping to become the new boss of the underworld. However, his power was no match for his enthusiasm, and the power-mad psychologist was killed by a bomb he had planted for Spider-Man. Harry was released and considered cured, and he and Peter rekindled their friendship.

For a while, Harry's life seemed back on track; His company began turning profits once more, and he developed a romance with Liz Allan, whom he met at the wedding of Betty Brant and Ned Leeds. Not long after, the two were married, and eventually they had a son, whom Harry named Normie in memory of the boy's grandfather. Harry also gave his blessing to the marriage of Peter and Mary Jane. However, Harry was forced to act as the Green Goblin a few times during these years, once to defeat Jason Macendale, the Hobgoblin, who sought the Goblin formula that gave the Green Goblin superhuman strength; Harry was able to defeat the Hobgoblin by doubling back during an aerial chase and emptying his entire supply of pumpkin bombs onto the Hobgoblin. Harry even wondered if he could use the Goblin persona for a career as a superhero, but Peter convinced him that the Goblin had too much baggage for such a role, and Harry buried the Goblin menace within his mind once more, and focussed on his business and family.

Death
This tranquility was shattered when the aftereffects of the Inferno crisis sundered the barrier between Harry's conscious and subconscious minds. Once again he remembered being the Green Goblin - and his irrational hatred of Spider-Man (Harry had now convinced himself that Peter resented the Osborns' 'stable family life' due to never having been wanted by his guardians, when in fact it was almost the complete opposite). His sanity shattered, he declared that their next confrontation would be their final one, and only one of them would be alive at the end. To ensure that he was the victor, Harry researched his father's chemical notes, hoping to recreate the original Goblin's superhuman strength. Harry made his own modifications to the formula, and upon ingesting it, it proved better than he had dreamed. The new Goblin Formula had made him stronger than both Spider-Man and his father. Now a physical match for Spider-Man, Harry planned his final revenge.

Harry took to stalking Peter Parker on his Goblin Glider, claiming that there was no law against just soaring around town in a colourful costume, and taunting Peter that someday he would destroy him, but he relished keeping Peter in suspense in the meantime. After weeks of this, Peter finally lost his cool and struck at Harry, only to be sent flying when Harry hit back, demonstrating his new strength. He then rocketed away, taunting Spider-Man's inability to stop him.

Not long after, Harry held a prestigious dinner at his townhouse, inviting many of his father's old business associates. However, it was actually a trap, and Harry had planted explosives throughout the townhouse, which he planned to detonate, thus destroying everybody who had slighted the Osborns. Spider-Man, fearing the worst, dropped in to investigate, only to be confronted by Harry as the Green Goblin. The two former friends engaged in an explosive battle, which ended when Harry injected Peter with a drug that left him immobile but still conscious.

However, even as he gloated over his victory, he realized that Mary Jane and his son Normie were also in the townhouse, and that the explosives would detonate in two minutes. Despite protestations that he wasn't a hero, Peter convinced Harry to use his glider to get the two to safety. Once Normie and Mary Jane were safe, Harry's sanity finally returned, and he realized that he had left Peter to die. Harry rescued Peter from the explosion in the nick of time. However, as his friends thanked him, he suddenly collapsed. The Goblin Formula was imperfect, and while it had increased his strength, it was also lethally poisoning him. Paramedics were called, but Harry died en route to the hospital. With his final words, he apologised to Peter, and confirmed that despite everything, they were still best friends.

Post-Mortem
However, Harry had one last trick up his sleeve. Sometime before his final confrontation with Spider-Man, Harry had employed the Chameleon to construct LMDs of Peter's parents to play with his emotions. The plot ended with both constructs revealed to be fake when both "died," shattering Peter's mind. After nearly killing the Chameleon, Peter found a tape Harry had left before he died, revealing his role in the plot and mocking Peter. Peter went temporarily insane from the shock and proved that Harry, when in the grip of insanity, was capable of cruelty comparable to that of his father.

Some time later, it was revealed that Norman Osborn had not in fact died when the glider impaled him, and that he had fled to Europe, hoping to give Harry a chance to prove himself. A year after Harry's death, Norman returned to America, nearly driving Spider-Man insane with the Clone Saga (Where Osborn tried to convince Peter that he was his own clone to make Peter lose the will to live) and regaining the mantle of the Green Goblin when he finally revealed himself as the mastermind, shortly before the death of Ben Reilly (The real clone). If anything, Harry's death has made the rivalry between Spider-Man and the Green Goblin even more bitter than before, as both blame the other for Harry's death.

Powers and abilities
For most of his life, Harry Osborn had no superhuman abilities. When he drank the experimental Goblin Formula, his strength was augmented beyond that of either Spider-Man or the Green Goblin. His durability, agility and intelligence likewise increased, but the extent of these augmentations is unknown.

Harry had all of the Green Goblin's equipment, including the explosive "pumpkin bombs" and the razor-edged boomerang blades. He also rode on a modified version of the Goblin Glider that was even faster and more mobile than the original.

Animation
Despite his importance in the Spider-Man saga, Harry has made few appearances in most Spider-Man animated series, appearing only in the most recent ones. In the 1994 Spider-Man series, Harry is voiced by Gary Imhoff. In this adaptation, Harry becomes the Green Goblin after his father, the original Goblin, becomes trapped in the Negative Zone. However, he was forced against his will to be the replacement villain by the original Green Goblin, who contacted him while in limbo. Harry tried to kill Spider-Man numerous times (the Green Goblin promised if Harry did so, he'd see his father, despite that the Goblin is Harry's father) but failed, also getting into some trouble with the Punisher as well. In the end, he realized in horror that the Goblin is his father and instead of wanting to quit, he enjoys becoming the new villain and wants Spider-Man dead. But in the end, Spider-Man knocked him out while in a battle on the George Washington Bridge (which, ironically, was where the original Green Goblin was sucked into limbo) and he was taken away by the Punisher, who realized who Harry was. He was then taken to Ravencroft by Spider-Man. Later, when Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson (who was secretly a clone) were getting married, Harry found out and grew insane, as he was in love with MJ. So he interrupted the wedding and threatened to blow up the church the wedding was taking place if Harry and MJ weren't married. But in the end, Liz Allan appealed to Harry not to either blow up the church nor marry MJ and that his friends do love him.

In the 2003 MTV Spider-Man series, which ties in with the movies, Harry is voiced by Ian Ziering. Harry had a dark tone in this series (he hated Spider-Man because he blames him for the death of his father in the previous movie), which made him look better, as critics have reviewed, about his portrayal in the comics and previous 1990s animated series of Spider-Man, he was too corny.

Film
In the 2002 Spider-Man movie and its sequels, Harry is played by actor James Franco who had originally auditioned for the titular role.

In the first film, Harry is one of Peter's high school classmates, who resents the fact that his father seems to understand Peter better than him. Early in the movie, Peter becomes Spider-Man and Norman becomes the Green Goblin, but Harry remains unaware that the two are his best friend and his father. At the end of the film, the Green Goblin has been killed by his own glider (he was impaled in the thighs, where he died from internal bleeding, whereas in the comics he temporarily died from a chest impalement), after failing to kill Mary Jane. Spider-Man drops Norman's body at his mansion, and Harry spots him leaving. At his father's funeral, a brooding Harry tells Peter that Spider-Man will pay for the death of his father.

In Spider-Man 2, Harry takes over his late father's career but his business failures and unresolved resentment towards Peter, who he feels is siding with Spider-Man rather than him, causes him to slowly spiral into alcoholism. His vendetta against Spider-Man brings him into an alliance with Doctor Octopus. Harry agrees to supply Doc Ock the tritium he needs to create his artificial sun if he will hunt down and deliver Spider-Man to him. After a long battle, Spider-Man is beaten by Doc Ock while the civilians nobly try to defend him. Spider-Man is brought before Harry, who prepares to kill Spider-Man with a dagger. Before he does so, however, he removes Spider-Man's mask, and is shocked to see Peter's face. A dazed Peter regains consciousness, and he convinces Harry to let him go and rescue Mary Jane. At the end of the movie a confused Harry hallucinates, seeing his father's image in a mirror, demanding that Harry avenge him. Harry shatters the mirror, only to find his father's hidden lair, with the Green Goblin equipment within.

In the third film, the Spider-Man teaser trailer shows that Harry dons armor. However, Sam Raimi has stated that Harry will neither be referred to as the second Green Goblin or the Hobgoblin, although his character in the third film was based off of the two. He wears a purple suit, with a pair of green goggles and a green mouthpiece whilst riding a glider. Also, in the trailer, a Goblin bomb exploded right beside Harry's face. Exclusive footage at Comic-Con revealed that it is Peter who throws the bomb. The trailer also shows Harry and Mary Jane looking at each other romantically. It has also been stated by James Franco this will be the last movie of the Spider-Man series that he will be in.