It's weird that Marvel doesn't seem to have any books for younger readers anymore, but they've had a few titles that were basically child endangerment, like
Spider-Boy, the most recent
Spider-Girl, and this one: from 2023,
Red Goblin #8, written by Alex Paknadel, pencils by Chris Campana, inks by Roberto Poggi. Cover by InHyuk Lee.
We did get the
Red Goblin action figure, mostly for the Kingpin leg he came with; but this wasn't the same one: instead of Norman Osborn under a symbiote, it was his grandson Normie! Who was having trouble controlling the symbiote he named 'Rascal,' but he might have been wondering, was the symbiote the violent one...or was he? This issue continues his struggle against the Goblin Nation, under Goblin King/former heroic Green Goblin Phil Urich. Phil was basically a mobile corpse at this point, and had set the mercenary Crossbones on one of his own henchmen, to prevent him from maybe turning on him. Miles Morales helps Normie out, delivering a top-shelf knockout to Crossbones: seriously, Miles beat him so bad, he looked like he was melting afterwards.
Normie then pretends to remember a Goblin safehouse, but that's just to send Miles on a wild goose chase: Normie knew Spider-Man wouldn't be okay with him murdering every Goblin goon in his way, to rescue his friend Tim. In the ensuing showdown, Urich nearly convinces Rascal to abandon Normie, comparing him to "keeping a tiger in a cage." Rascal thinks maybe Normie would be happy without him, but Normie knows Rascal would just be used to hurt people: with Normie, at least they'd only be hurting bad people...hopefully. Urich then tries to beg out of getting murdered, in that he was basically dead already, but it doesn't appear to save him. (I don't love Urich going bad, but he's also been repeatedly jobbed over the years.)
Tim somehow gets to Norman Osborn, who was currently the Gold Goblin, and maybe not a bad guy--eh, he was still an industrialist 1-percenter, he probably still wasn't great. But, can he help his grandson? Does he need help? There were two more issues, so who knows? We saw Normie and Rascal in
Adam Warren's stellar Venom Wars: Fantastic Four, but I'm not sure I knew about this series until stumbling across this issue. Not having the rest of it in front of me, I don't know all the backstory: Normie's mom Liz appeared to be working for a competitor to Osborn (Alchemax, one of the legacies of
Spider-Man 2099!) and had her own Goblin thing going? And how old is Normie, anyway? Marvel time does weird things. Try to put, say, Franklin Richards, Kitty Pryde, Kamala Khan, the Power Pack kids, Molly Hayes from
Runaways, and Normie and the aforementioned Spider-Kids in some kind of order based on how old they appear to be now, versus when each debuted. Actually, maybe don't; you'd never get an answer everyone liked. I do like how Marvel made a big deal a couple years ago about certain younger heroes being outlawed, so now there's even younger ones: the law is an ass!
3 comments:
Honestly, the whole thing’s kinda creepy, sticking a kid with a symbiotie without his consent and making him keep said symbiote in line….yet Marvel did the same thing with Eddie’s son Dylan, so….eh.
I never thought I’d say it, but there REALLY needs to be a modern day Jim Shooter keeping everyone (and continuity) straight up there minus the more negative aspects of Shooter’s leadership, because it just seems like a total mess at Marvel right now.
Marvel will do the occasional special for younger readers- there was one with Symbie a month or so ago and they reprinted a few Franklin Richards stories earlier in the summer. I think there’s a Halloween giveaway soon that’s kid-friendly.
But yeah, there haven’t been any regular books that were less than Teen for a while. That sort of thing seems to have dried up without TV tie-in series. DC’s a little better but same situation mostly.
Oops, forgot they’re doing a Jeff The Land Shark miniseries- didn’t really hit me so I didn’t go for it.
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