6. Kidnapping (And Killing?) Peter And Mary Janes Baby
By 1996, Spider-Man had lived a Goblin-free existence for a number of years. Norman had been dead since impaling himself on his glider in Amazing Spider-Man #122, and Harry had died a few years earlier (in real time) in Spectacular Spider-Man #200. But Amazing Spider-Man #418 marks the return of the Green Goblin legacy in a major way. After Peters wife Mary Jane announced she was pregnant a few years earlier, the long-awaited birth of the couples child comes in Amazing Spider-Man #418. Except, when MJ delivers the baby, her child is carted away by a mysterious nurse named Alison Mongrain and the worried mother is told she had had a miscarriage. Readers then see Mongrain drive to a pier with a special delivery for someone lurking in the shadows. The man is later revealed to be Norman, back from the dead. His abduction of baby May is actually only the first piece of a long-simmering master plan that is fully fleshed out during the "Revelations" arc (more on that in a second). While it was patently obvious that the editorial forces at Marvel didnt want to deal with writing a child for Peter and MJ, having Norman kidnap and assumedly kill May Parker was a despicable move, even for him.