6 Times Comics Made Great Villains Terrible

3. Green Goblin - The Clone Saga

Although Venom may be the Spider-Man villain on everyone's lips currently, it was Norman Osborn's Green Goblin who once reigned supreme as Spider-Man's most notorious foe.

Murderer of Gwen Stacy and a recurring foe for Peter Parker, the father Osborn has terrorised Spider-Man since the mid sixties, and peaked in terms of notoriety during 'The Night Gwen Stacy Died', after which he was impaled on his own Goblin Glider. Future story-arcs would see other villains take on the Goblin motif, including Norman's own son, Harry, and for a while, it was the perfect way of continuing the villain's legacy, with the prospect of Norman genuinely returning then lingering more like a spectre than a potential future story-arc.

Then came the Clone Saga, AKA the most over-stuffed example of nineties comic book excess there is. The storyline saw Professor Miles Warren, going by the villainous moniker of the Jackal, terrorise Peter with a series of clone-based plots, which eventually peaked with the revelation that Ben Reilly - not Parker - was the original version of Spider-Man.

Then things got even weirder as Norman returned, having been the true culprit behind the attacks all along. From then on in, Osborn reestablished himself as a key Spider-Man villain, was involved in a disastrous retcon whereby it was revealed he and Gwen Stacy had an affair, and headed up S.H.I.EL.D's evil counterpart, H.A.M.M.E.R., during the Dark Reign storyline.