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Author:
Title: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN No. 14
Place Published:
Publisher:Marvel [Indicia: Non-Pareil Publishing Group]
Date Published: July, 1964
Description:

CGC certified: VG- (3.5). Off-white to white pages. Not cleaned and pressed. Cover: Steve Ditko pencils and inks, Stan Goldberg colors. Story: Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Art: Steve Ditko. Colors: Stan Goldberg. Lettering: Artie Simek. First appearance: The Green Goblin. GPAnalysis: A 3.5 sold for $2040 in 8/22.

First appearance of the Green Goblin, a weird figure of menace whose leering countenance harkens to Ditko's pre-Code grotesques. Biographer Blake Bell claims that Ditko's growing interest in Ayn Rand's Objectivist ideals made him reluctant to portray "fantastical elements" (although Ditko's hallucinatory work on Doctor Strange's mystic mag undermines this theory). According to Bell, Ditko's Randian ideals caused him to defy Stan Lee's original plans for the Green Goblin:

"Lee wanted a movie crew to find an Egyptian-like sarcophagus containing an ancient, mythological demon that would be released and come to life. 'I rejected Stan's idea,' says Ditko. 'A mythological demon made the whole Peter Parker/Spider-Man world a place where nothing is metaphysically impossible.' Instead, the Goblin's origin is built as a mystery to be slowly unveiled; his face hidden by shadows, hinting only that he is a wealthy figure with a lust for power." – Bell, Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko. Fantagraphics: 2008, pp. 57-58.

"Lee and Ditko are clearly setting up the the Goblin as a villain of some importance. He is going to make four more appearances in the Ditko years, far more than any other super villain. A great deal is made of the fact that the Goblin is still at large at the end of the episode, and a great deal is made of the fact that no-one knows who he really is. The first panel of the comic shows the Goblin mask in the foreground, while a shadowy figure puts the finish touches to the code-baiting broomstick; the final panels show him pulling the mask off and, with his face obscured, announcing that 'the world hasn't heard the last of...the Green Goblin.' It certainly hasn't." – Andrew Rilstone, Listen Bud: The First Great Graphic Novel in American Literature. Unpublished manuscript, pp. 168-169.

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