One Perfect Moment: Norman Osborn

[proteus_lives]

Greetings True Believers! This is my last post for OPM week and it's one of my favorites, for two reasons.

1. This issue of "Spider-Man's Tangled Web" features one of the best parts of any comic-verse. The villain bar. I love scenes of villains just hanging out, grousing about heroes, comparing notes and relaxing. Which is why I included a few scans of just that.

2. This story is an example of the fact that Norman Osborn doesn't need a costume, glider or control of an international martial agency to be one of the scariest motherfuckers on the planet.

Enjoy!





We enter a seedy bar in NYC. A man in a fedora and trench-coat enters, his face in the shadows.






Now, some hilarious bar-talk, villain-style.





Love it.

The man in the fedora is here to meet Adrian Toomes (The Vulture) and Kraven the Hunter (Alyosha Kravinoff).

The main reason they are there is talk about their latest encounters with Spider-Man and to bitch about the Webhead and the supers in general. They shoot the shit for awhile and then they start talking about the ladies.



Kraven then claims to have slept with the Black Widow, Toomes calls bullshit and the man in the fedora says, "Redheads can be very crazy and difficult"

Adrian and Kraven tell about their latest encounters. Kraven is annoyed that Spidey stuck his nose in his business. Adrian's latest rant is how the just hates the fucking jokes and how Spidey never seems to take their encounters seriously.

Kraven makes fun of Toomes, they come close to blows when...













Now, that is a great fucking villain moment.

Comments

[goggle_kid]

If only Ron Zimmerman dedicated more energy to writing stuff like this than to being the "bad boy" of Marvel's writing crew and picking fights with fans.

But yeah this was one of my all time favorite one-shot stories.

[jlroberson]

This was written by ZIMMERMAN? I wouldn't have expected that, this being so distinctive.

Although it's Phillips that has the best moment. Second to last page, second to last panel of it. That. That is not just one of the best Norman expressions, it's one of the best expressions ever captured in comics, and a hard one to, one that tells you volumes about him just from, well, his eye.

[proteus_lives]

Much motto.

The eyes are the best. WIth those eyes a middle-aged man just scared the shit out of a room full of people who shoot lasers, knock down buildings and fly.

[jlroberson]

And also, I think that's the essence of him, and his insecurity too: he's a self-made villain, and prides himself on it.

[skalja]

Zimmerman has a great sense of characterization and a really fun conversational voice, but he frequently sabotages himself with excessive references to contemporary pop culture (which ... you really have to go overboard to have too many refs in Spider-Man) and juvenile humor. IMO, anyway.