Comic Book Stories 2: The Hobgoblin, and a Discussion of Ugly Truth

Okay, so the main villains of the Spiderman series are not as well known as Batman or Superman villains, but they are just as compelling.

Facadesaside has talked about the nature of comic book supervillains as they are created parallel, opposites of their corresponding superheroes.

In literature, we call these characters foils, which are defined as characters who reveal the main character.

So for example, when a main character gets a glass of water from a servant, the interaction shows the protagonist's characteristic of getting water from a servant.

We just learned some Hegelian dialectic in class about the master-servant relationship, which in turn would have ramifications in Nietzche and Karl Marx, and Hegelian dialectic is looking sort of familiar with this particular example. I've wondered about the dual nature of supervillain-superhero relationships. Actually, as do they. There is a cliche scene where the hero and the villain look at each other and tell each other about how similar they are (2 come to mind very very easily: Austin Powers, where Mike Myers was satirizing the cliche scene by playing both the hero and the villain; and also Green Lantern's Burning in Effigy Comicbook arc, way way back when it was written by Ron Marz). In this way, the superhero is the master and the supervillain is the servant. But let's get back to the master-servant relationship when I understand it better, and I have more to say on it.


One of Spiderman's greatest villains is the Green Goblin, immortalized by like 4 or 5 generations of different alias characters (like Norman Osbourne, and then his son, and so on), including a short lived comic book series about a superhero version of the Green Goblin.

Q: How does the Facadesaside villain formula work for the Green Goblin (Parallel and Opposite to the Superhero)?

A: Green Goblin's most well-known alter ego is Norman Osbourne. He is a mad scientist, where Peter Parker (Spiderman) is a sane scientist. Goblin is a materialist and wants to be rich, Parker is poor and wants to get through college. Goblin-Osbourne has a frustrated and sadistic humor where Parker has a light hearted and pragmatic sense of humor. Spiderman uses simple tools (webbing) and simple reasoning where Goblin uses complex tools (goblin glider: a machine, and bombs) and convoluted reasoning.


One of the fascinating incarnations of the Green Goblin is the Hobgoblin, which is obviously just a variation on the Green Goblin character and his aliases. In fact, I think in the comics there was actually a plot where the illusion-revealed at the end of the story arc was that instead of the Green Goblin, it was the Hobgoblin who was to blame. (works cited: I of course got most of my information from the television series, and not the comic books).

So as I was foreshadowing-implying, I argue that Hobgoblin's major character traits are negligible. Instead of a mad military scientist like Norman Osborne, Hobgoblin is a computer scientist.

The relevance to the blog is that Hobgoblin varies from Norman Osborne in one respect: Hobgoblin is not wearing a mask where Norman Osborne is. The ugly mask he wears is his face, a victim of acid or whatever plot twist they put in there.

This seems like a twist on the Abraham Lincoln joke. The Lincoln joke is, "If I had two faces, why would I be wearing this one?"

I hypothesize, and again I haven't read a lot of the spiderman comics, but I think that this would make the character's actions in the comic books to be more crazy. Writers would write the character necessarily as having less to lose than the Green Goblin character. There is no alias, here.

It's a commentary on ugly truth.


Bonus Facadesaside: Smurf story and the Problem with Beautiful Truth

There's an episode of the smurfs where they are trying to imitate Papa Smurf all day.

When they were trying to cure one of the sick smurfs, who had the flu, they feed him some nasty onion-and-gross-foods soup. They said, "It smells so bad, it must be healthy."

And Keats wrote, "truth is beauty, beauty is truth."

The Hobgoblin character represents when truth is ugly, and there's enough of a mystery revealed problem that we can acknowledge it as a common mistake.

I have the problem of, after finding out that the uglier thing is true, romanticizing the ugly thing. For example, I like spiders, and although they are ugly to most people (perhaps they are objectively ugly?), I have conditioned myself to like them better by romanticizing how victimized and misunderstood they are.

I think that we 1) have wishful thinking that what is true is beautiful, 2) have conditioning that says that what is beautiful is true, and 3) have a pragmatic standpoint of what is true is useful (to humans).

Further explanation of 3): so when we notice that something is true or beautiful to us, we do some existentialism where we create or created that truthfulness. Wild stuff!!!


What is the nature of this problem?
How can we avoid it?
How is this different from the book by its cover and iceberg facadesaside?