A long-awaited moment for Harry (and Spider-Man in general) fans is here! The DeMatteis/Buscema Spectacular Spider-Man run is finally available to buy in omnibus format in the US!

….Unfortunately I am not in the US so I’ll have to wait. But what I can do in the meantime is read J.M. DeMatteis’s blog post about the release. There are some great quotes about Harry in there.

The first arc in our two-year run was the story collected in this volume: “The Child Within.” The general idea for the story had been buzzing in my head for a while; I almost did an embryonic version of it for Legends of the Dark Knight at DC, but it fell through at the last minute. I’m glad it did, because the idea provided the perfect framework for exploring the unique Peter Parker-Harry Osborn dynamic: they’re best friends, they genuinely love each other, but, because of Harry’s mental instability, they’ve become mortal enemies. Talk about fodder for great drama! 

JMD neatly sums up the difference between Harry and Norman:

If Peter survived by taking on too much guilt, Harry survived by living in denial. He’d been psychologically broken by the emotional abuse he suffered at his father’s hands—but he never truly faced it. He couldn’t admit what a monster Norman Osborn was. The only way Harry could survive was by denying the darkness in Norman, blaming others—primarily Peter—for what Norman became, for the damage done to Harry’s life. In the end, he became the very thing his father was—the victim transformed into the victimizer—taking on the mantle of the Green Goblin. But Harry, unlike Norman, had genuine good at his core—although it would take time, and tragedy, for that good to make itself known in Spectacular Spider-Man #200. 

He also talks about Vermin and his character journey, which makes me so sad and mad because later, non-JMD comics ruined everything Vermin was about. But that’s another story.

There’s some good stuff in the comments of DeMatteis’s post as well, for example that he knew nothing about the future plotline of Harry bringing back Peter’s parents as robots (I think we all guessed that, but anyway) and this snippet:

The major difference [between Norman and Harry] for me, as a writer, is the close relationship between Harry and Peter: the fact that these two are best friends who love each other yet find themselves in opposition. Norman feels more…typical: the crazed, brilliant and manipulative villain. There’s obviously more to him than that, but, even when he’s explored in depth (as I tried to do in SHADOW OF THE GREEN GOBLIN), I find him less interesting than the Harry Goblin. Still a wonderful character, and for many people he’s the definitive Goblin, but I prefer Harry.