Marvel is About to Trash a Beloved Spider-Man Arc After 5 Long Years

The Amazing Spider-Man, specifically the mainline Earth-616 continuity, is the most contentious Spider-Man comic book, and it’ll take a truly phenomenal story, writer, and artist combo to free it from that reputation. Joe Kelly has arguably been doing a terrific job with The Amazing Spider-Man lately, having Peter Parker go to space while Norman Osborn temporarily plays the role of a substitute Spider-Man on Earth, and Ben Reilly seems to be on a brand-new path with a clean slate.

In particular, this run’s emphasis on Norman has been a fascinating deep dive into his psyche. It’ll be neat to see how the battle against Hobgoblin and the Goblin Slayer army pans out, but readers who follow comic solicitations already know that it concludes rather soon to make way for a symbiote-infested event dubbed The Amazing Spider-Man/Venom: Death Spiral. While that goes on, though, The Amazing Spider-Man: Spider-Versity threatens to undo the last five years of character development for Norman.

Norman Osborn is a Good Guy... for Now

Norman was “purged of his sins” by Sin-Eater five years ago, and the character’s throughline and path to ‘redemption’ have been winding and convoluted since. There will forever be a ‘will he, won’t he’ in terms of whether Norman will somehow turn evil again and succumb to the Goblin, for instance, and it’s tough to call Norman’s good guy arc a ‘redemption’ when the part of him that was malevolent was stripped away from him involuntarily.

Norman is paramount to the Joe Kelly run as he’s the Spider-Man on Earth who’s interacting with other Spiders and holding down the fort while Peter is in space. The Amazing Spider-Man/Venom: Death Spiral will split them up once more: Peter will be teaming up with Mary Jane Watson/Venom and Eddie Brock/Carnage to fight a serial killer super-villain named Torment, as Norman will be training a group of Spider-People in the event that they need to stop the Green Goblin.

Will Spider-Versity Tarnish Norman Osborn’s Character Development?

The implication made by The Amazing Spider-Man: Spider-Versity, which is a five-issue limited series in the Earth-616 continuity, is that Norman becomes Green Goblin by the end of it, or perhaps closer to The Amazing Spider-Man #1000, Marvel’s quickly approaching milestone. If so, Norman becoming Green Goblin will hopefully be worthwhile, since it means that five years of ‘redemption’ and character development for Spider-Man’s arch-nemeses-turned-good guy will be flushed down the drain.

The Amazing Spider-Man: Spider-Versity’s logline reads:

Miles Morales, Spider-Gwen, Silk, Araña, Spider-Boy, and Spider-Girl have one thing in common - THEY AREN’T READY. According to former Resolute Spider-Man Norman Osborn. So he and Spider-Woman are going to train them to meet the next threat - the only way the Green Goblin knows how. Because the next threat might well BE the Green Goblin.

The Amazing Spider-Man: Spider-Versity #1 is scheduled to be released on April 22, 2026.