Kindred just revealed where their true hatred for Spider-Man stems from — and in the process, a classic Silver Age moment comes back to haunt Peter.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Amazing Spider-Man #55 by Nick Spencer, Patrick Gleason, Edgar Delgado and VC’s Jor Caramagna, on sale now.
Spider-Man has been dealing with the threat of Kindred, a powerful and seemingly supernaturally-empowered foe who seems to know everything about the Wall-Crawler. That includes all his “sins” over the years — even a choice Peter Parker made years ago that’s ramifications are still being felt today.
Kindred just called out Spider-Man over actions he took all the way back in the Silver Age, specifically Amazing Spider-Man #40 — and the thing is, Kindred has a bit of a point.
After spending a great deal of time hiding his identity and staying in the shadows, one of Spider-Man’s oldest friends — Harry Osborn — revealed himself as Kindred. His dedication to tormenting Spider-Man comes from the belief that the hero has committed various “sins” in his career. With the Order of the Web captured by Kindred and there to watch Peter’s punishment, Spider-Man tries to reason with his old friend. But Harry rants and raves at him, explaining that his ultimate fury with Peter stems from the fact that Spider-Man was aware of how dangerous the Green Goblin was — and that he was Norman Osborn, Harry’s father. Even though Peter tries to argue that he was just protecting Harry from the truth when they were both in college, Harry lashes out.
Harry tells Spider-Man that Peter should have told the truth about the situation. He argues that if he’d known Norman was the Green Goblin, then he’d been able to have gotten Norman the psychiatric help he needed — potentially preventing all the eventual bloodshed at the hands of the Green Goblin. Peter brings up that Norman had amnesia, and was no longer a threat — referencing the ending of Amazing Spider-Man #39 & 40. The classic Stan Lee/John Romita Sr. issues saw Peter finally discover the identity of the Green Goblin — after being captured by the villain and having his own identity exposed. Although Peter reasons that he did this because Norman wasn’t a threat while afflicted with amnesia, Harry argues that Peter only did this so he could keep his identity a secret to the world.