Green Goblin #3, page 6 (1995)

The job of a superhero is a very dangerous one, fraught with hazards and threats you can barely imagine. But it's only more so, when you fail to take the job seriously, as this page shows you so well!

I always thought it was an interesting choice by Marvel, to try to take one of (arguably) their most evil character personas and try to make it into a heroic one. But that's just what they did with this mid-90's Green Goblin series. Passing the mantle onto someone who wasn't particularly heroic, courageous, or even competent at the gig. This Green Goblin felt like a hero for the "grungy slacker" generation. Something only reinforced by what happens to him on this very page. Snooping on someone's business is always risky, but to do it to a superhero takes some serious brass balls and a lack of brains!

Artist Scott McDaniel's kinetic and impactful style is perfectly suited to the task of playing up the humor and danger of this almost slapsticky moment, when Green Goblin learns why tampering with people's mail is a serious offense. The opening panel, with it's swooping shadows, belies the danger he is actually in. The third panel, with it's large central image of him paying the price for his perfidy (say that five times really fast), followed by the clownish follow-up in the final panel, complete with "stars circling his head," shows you that this guy really isn't cut out for this profession. Something his internal dialogue captions only goes on to belabor that point. You laugh at his stupidity of the moment, but then realize that the danger he put himself in is truly no laughing matter. The haphazard and off-kilter layout of the panels, it a prefect match for the Goblin's own actions in the scene. He's not just an amateur at being a hero, but a complete incompetent at it as well.

Not everyone has "the right stuff" to make it as a superhero. Which is likely one of the reasons the Goblin's series didn't last very long. But we can always use the occasional example of why that is, especially when it can bring on some fun humor and slapstick action. As the old saying goes "we all need the clowns to make us smile." But, maybe, you could find a less risky way for getting those laughs, without learning it the hard way, as Phil Urich (aka, the Green Goblin) had to!