Don’t Let the Doctor Octopus Hype Fool You, Green Goblin is Still the Champ

There has been a great deal of buzz around the MCU’s Spider-Man 3 and understandably so. Thus far, according to preliminary buzz, the ninth Spider-movie in 20 years is stacked with nerdy goodness. There’s a team-up with Dr. Strange, Charlie Cox reprising his role as Daredevil from the gone-too-soon Netflix series with guest appearances from former Spider-Men Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. On top of all that, Alfred Molina is supposedly returning as Doctor Octopus. That’s a lot of Spider lore all rolled up into one movie. I absolutely understand how so much hype can revolve around Doc Ock’s return, because he’s easily one of the best villains in the context of these movies. And I can see where that notoriety has probably been a driving force in the somewhat retconned narrative of the past decade or so that Otto Octavius is somehow Spider-Man’s greatest nemesis. While he is indeed a top shelf foe in the wall crawler’s rogues gallery, it’s important to remember that when it comes down to it, there’s really only one archnemesis to truly match our Friendly Neighborhood Hero: Norman Osborn aka the Green Goblin.

via Small Screen

One of the most important fundamentals of any good superhero lore is the villain, most notably the archnemesis. The villain’s main function is to contrast against the hero’s view of the world and how they relate to their fellow man. Commonly, they tend to be the product of similar circumstances and make very different lessons about how to respond to th…