The Amazing Spider-Man #14

A goblin who started as a demon

By the spring of 1964 Spider-Man was less than two years old and was collecting a gallery of villains. Stan Lee's idea for the next one was a figure out of mythology. Steve Ditko, who drew the series, took the concept somewhere else. "I changed Stan's mythological demon into a human villain," he later said.

The Amazing Spider-Man #14 went on sale on April 9, 1964, with a July cover date. It cost 12 cents and ran 36 pages. The 22-page lead story, "The Grotesque Adventure of the Green Goblin!", opens with a boast: "Only the merry Marvel madmen could have dreamed him up!"

In the story the Goblin hires the Enforcers to help him beat Spider-Man, then talks a producer named B.J. Cosmos into filming a movie of Spider-Man fighting the Goblin and the Enforcers in the desert. During the shoot the villains spring their trap and accidentally wake the Hulk, giving the issue a second claim to fame: the first meeting of Spider-Man and the Hulk.

Lee, Ditko and a secret identity

Steve Ditko was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on November 2, 1927. He co-created Spider-Man with Lee in Amazing Fantasy #15 in 1962, designing the costume and the web-shooters, and created Doctor Strange in 1963. He was a follower of Ayn Rand's Objectivism, avoided interviews for most of his life, and once explained that his personality was not what he was offering readers: "my artwork" was.

The Goblin's face stayed hidden until 1966, and the question of who was under the mask became a point of friction. Lee wanted the villain to be someone Peter Parker already knew; Ditko preferred a stranger. Ditko left Marvel in 1966 after drawing the first 38 issues. Accounts differ on why: the popular theory points to the Goblin argument, while Ditko later said Lee had broken off contact.

John Romita Sr. took over with issue #39, and the Goblin was unmasked as the businessman Norman Osborn. "Stan wouldn't have been able to stand it if Ditko did the story and didn't reveal that the Green Goblin was Norman Osborn," Romita recalled. Ditko died in New York around June 29, 2018, at 90.

Spider-Man's number one enemy

The Goblin's most notorious moment came in 1973, in The Amazing Spider-Man #121 and #122, "The Night Gwen Stacy Died," written by Gerry Conway. The character went on to film: Willem Dafoe played Norman Osborn in the first of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man films in 2002 and returned to the role in Spider-Man: No Way Home in 2021.

Auction catalogers have tracked the issue's rise. A 2021 description said only the first four issues of the series were more valuable and that #4 was "in danger of being overtaken."

The one 9.8

Very few copies survive in near-perfect condition, and one feature of the cover is to blame. A 2015 auction description pointed to the dark Spider-Man head vignette in the top left corner, noting that nearly every copy shows a scuff on that dark surface. Even copies from fine collections, it said, failed to reach 9.8 because of it.

In November 2015 the CGC census listed exactly one copy at 9.8, with none higher. That copy, with white pages, sold without reserve at auction in Beverly Hills on November 19, 2015, for $54,970. The census still showed a single 9.8 in August 2017 and July 2021.

In September 2021 a CGC 9.8 white-page copy from a top-ranked Amazing Spider-Man registry set collection came up at auction, described as "the only such copy CGC has certified to date," and sold for $210,000, the highest price found for the issue. A copy graded 9.8 by a rival grading service, CBCS, brought $71,700 at auction in Dallas in August 2017; its catalog called it tied with the single CGC copy as the highest-graded example.

How to recognize it

The original has a 12-cent price and a July 1964 cover date, with Ditko's cover showing the Goblin and Spider-Man. Look closely at the dark Spider-Man head box in the upper left corner: it is the spot graders say almost always shows wear.

The letters page in this issue carries a special announcements section. The story has been reprinted many times, so the cover price and date are the quickest way to separate a 1964 original from later editions.

The numbers

Cover price

12 cents

Pages

36; lead story 22

Print run

Not documented in the sources consulted

Census, November 2015

1 in CGC 9.8, none higher

Census, August 2017

1 in CGC 9.8, none higher

Census, July 2021

1 in CGC 9.8, none higher

Timeline

1. Aug 1962

   Spider-Man debuts in Amazing Fantasy #15 (cover date).

2. Apr 9, 1964

   The Amazing Spider-Man #14 goes on sale for 12 cents with a July 1964 cover date.

3. 1966

   Steve Ditko leaves Marvel after 38 issues; John Romita Sr. takes over with #39, where the Goblin is unmasked as Norman Osborn.

4. 1973

   "The Night Gwen Stacy Died" runs in The Amazing Spider-Man #121 and #122.

5. 2002

   Willem Dafoe plays Norman Osborn in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man.

6. Nov 19, 2015

   The only CGC 9.8 copy then on the census sells without reserve at auction in Beverly Hills for $54,970.

7. Aug 10, 2017

   A CBCS 9.8 copy sells at auction in Dallas for $71,700; the CGC census still shows one 9.8.

8. Jun 29, 2018

   Steve Ditko dies in New York, about this date.

9. Jul 2021

   The CGC census lists one copy at 9.8, none higher.

10. Sep 2021

    The CGC 9.8 copy sells at auction for $210,000.

11. 2021

    Dafoe returns as the Green Goblin in Spider-Man: No Way Home.

The world in 1964

• Feb 9, 1964

  The Beatles play The Ed Sullivan Show for an estimated 73 million viewers.

• Feb 25, 1964

  Cassius Clay beats Sonny Liston in Miami Beach for the heavyweight title.

• Mar 9, 1964

  The Supreme Court decides New York Times Co. v. Sullivan.

• Apr 17, 1964

  The Ford Mustang is unveiled to the public.

• Jul 2, 1964

  President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act.

• Aug 2, 1964

  The Gulf of Tonkin incident begins.

• Aug 27, 1964

  Mary Poppins premieres in Los Angeles.

• Nov 3, 1964

  Lyndon Johnson wins re-election in a landslide.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, The Amazing Spider-Man #14 is number 24 of 100 in the comics entries of the FLOAT 100. 92 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (93 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Stan Lee first pictured the Green Goblin as a mythological demon; Steve Ditko made him a human villain.
• The Goblin's first scheme was to lure Spider-Man into a fake movie shoot in the desert.
• The same issue has the first meeting of Spider-Man and the Hulk, whom the villains wake by accident.
• Graders blame the dark Spider-Man head box on the cover for keeping most copies out of the top grade.
• The Goblin was not unmasked as Norman Osborn until issue #39, after Ditko had left Marvel.
• The single CGC 9.8 copy sold for $54,970 in 2015 and $210,000 in 2021.