Amazing Spider-Man #50 Turns Peter Parker Into Green Goblin

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Amazing Spider-Man #50. The Green Goblin always gets the last laugh.

Marvel has been teasing that Norman Osborn, who was supernaturally cleansed of his sins back in Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 5) #50 in 2020, would don the Green Goblin mantle once more in Zeb Wells’ current comic run that turned Spider-Man’s archenemy into an ally. Peter Parker has even been working with the reformed Norman at Oscorp to keep an eye on his former foe.

But the sins of Norman Osborn didn’t disappear. After the Beyond Corporation injected Ashley Kafka with the concentrated physical manifestation of the Green Goblin’s evil, turning her into the Queen Goblin, she joined forces with the cloned Kraven the Hunter to return Norman’s disembodied sins. Kraven mystically imbued the sins into a spear and hunted down Norman, only to strike Spider-Man instead. A sin-free Norman then helped Kraven purge the sinister Spider-Man of the Green Goblin’s sins before returning them to the spear he buried away in last year’s Amazing Spider-Man #35.

This week’s Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 6) #50, written by Wells and drawn by Ed McGuinness, is the first issue of the five-part “Easy Being Green” storyline that will conclude in Amazing Spider-Man #54 in July. Part one sees the Living Brain — which accessed an Oscorp server despite being kept in a digital clean room inside a sub-basement at Oscorp ever since Spider-Man saved it from the Sinister Six — issue a message: “Peter Parker is not Spider-Man.” (The advanced thinking computer deduced Spider-Man’s secret identity back in Amazing Spider-Man #900.)

The Living Brain then ejects seemingly random words: “Chalice. Starlight. Aggregate.” As it turns out, these are secret codewords that trigger Norman’s retransformation into the Green Goblin. The Goblin gasses Peter to strip him of his powers, then has Norman confess that he dug up Kraven’s spear to reclaim his sins. Meanwhile, the Living Brain undergoes its own transformation to “birth” its offspring: The Walking Brain.

Spider-Man tricks the Green Goblin into taking him to Peter’s secret lab, where he sprays him with a gas he reverse-engineered to nullify the effects of the Goblin Serum: the Green Goblin is powerless. The de-powered Spider-Man beats the Green Goblin and delivers another hard-hitting blow: “No matter what I said, no matter how hard I tried, I never trusted you.” Meanwhile, in the Oscorp sub-basement, the Walking Brain tells his handler, Dr. Curt Connors, that “Peter Parker is not Spider-Man” isn’t a message… it’s a warning.

The Green Goblin reveals that he used the brainwashing Winkler Device to implant a trigger phrase inside Spider-Man’s mind when the Queen Goblin got her hands on the device (just issues ago in Amazing Spider-Man #48). “Doctor Jekyll was heckled by Peter’s pride… so he fed the boy to Mr. Hyde,” the Green Goblin says, turning a cackling Spider-Man into the Spider-Goblin. 

In an epilogue, Connors and the Walking Brain witness the grinning Spider-Goblin. “That is not Spider-Man. Not anymore,” the Brain says. “I am the only one who can save him now.” That’s if they can survive the return of the Sinister Six in Amazing Spider-Man #51, on stands June 5 from Marvel Comics.