The newest villain in The Amazing Spider-Man is known as the Goblin Queen. That said, she isn’t the first queen to be in the Goblin dynasty.
WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Amazing Spider-Man #90, available now from Marvel.
The pages of The Amazing Spider-Man (by Patrick Gleason, Mark Bagley, Andrew Hennessy, John Dell, Bryan Valenza, and VC’s Joe Caramagna) show that the Beyond Corporation will stop at nothing to push their new corporate Spider-Man in Ben Reilly. This even includes introducing their own villains to challenge the hero. Their latest example comes in the form of Queen Goblin, a woman injected with all of the hate of the Green Goblin to become an even more murderous addition to the Goblin dynasty. That said, she wasn’t the first queen to ride a glider and cackle through the skies.
Lily Hollister was a New York City socialite who was dating Harry Osborn. As the two got closer, she became curious and stumbled upon his family history concerning the Green Goblin. This curiosity eventually led her to find an old stache of Goblin gear hidden behind his closet. While snooping, she knocked over a sample of Goblin serum and touched it, which absorbed into her skin. The serum was different than before, and rather than enhance her physical attributes alone, it also allowed her to physically transform into a Goblin persona while twisting her mind.
As Menace, Lily terrorized her friends and the citizens of New York; she proved to be one of the deadliest heirs to the Goblin yet. Not only did she match Norman in physical strength, but she also nearly killed Peter. At the time, she also flew through the city’s skies using an ax as a weapon of choice along with pumpkin bombs. Eventually, she even embraced her legacy and became a part of the Goblin Nation, a cult thriving in New York’s underground. However, following these events, Spider-Man was able to cure Lily of her Menace persona, allowing her to live a life without the Goblin’s legacy at her back.
As of right now, the Queen Goblin’s story is still being uncovered, but she’s proving to be even more deadly than Menace in terms of her unpredictability. This is shown at the moment leading up to her initial attack, where Beyond tries to refocus her mind, but all the Queen Goblin wants to do is kill freely. Since she’s still chained to the corporation, it’s difficult to see how far her chaos will go when the time comes for her to be free of her ties. But when compared to Menace, this also means that the full extent of her evil has yet to be shown.
Like Lily, she was turned against her will, which may touch on a concept where female characters are more so forced into villainy than making the choice themselves. This has been previously exploited with characters like Betty Ross and Sue Storm becoming Harpy and Malice by the villains M.O.D.O.K. and Psycho-Man. As a result, it paints a subtle narrative that some of Marvel’s deadliest women can’t exist without some outside influence making the choice for them. Thankfully this isn’t a huge trend but results in becoming more noticeable when it occurs.
The Queen Goblin is undoubtedly one of the deadliest villains to challenge Spider-Man yet. But with her gimmick and actions, it’s hard not to compare her to Menace, who was heir to the Goblin legacy long before the Queen appeared. Nevertheless, this new adversary has quickly made her mark. As her powers affect the victim’s mind and her psyche is so fractured, her next moves are hard to pinpoint; she could be even more dangerous than Menace ever was.
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