The 20 greatest (and 10 worst) Spider-Man villains of all time
By Mike McNulty
2nd Worst Villain: Gabriel Stacy/The Grey Goblin/American Son
Yes, that Gabriel Stacy shares the same last name with Spider-Man love interest Gwen Stacy, isn’t a coincidence. It’s because they’re related. More specifically, Gabriel Stacy is Gwen Stacy’s son.
See, sometime around 2004, writer J. Michael Straczynski wrote a story called “Sins Past” about how Gwen was secretly pregnant without Peter’s knowledge. While she was in Europe after the death of her father, Captain George Stacy, Gwen gave birth to fraternal twins, a girl she named Sarah and a boy named Gabriel. She had planned to tell Peter about her children, but tragically died before ever getting the chance.
And who was the father of these two kids? Norman Osborn. That’s right—Peter’s first true love cheated on him with the Green Goblin! The same Green Goblin who was also responsible for her death.
This also meant that both her kids, because they had the Goblin formula in their genes, rapidly aged into their teens, with enhanced strength and agility as well. Once Osborn found out about his kids, he then trained them into assassins to go after Peter. Sarah had a change of heart, but Gabriel, after finding one of Norman’s lairs, donned a grey version of the Green Goblin costume, and called himself—what else?–The Gray Goblin.
Needless to say, nobody liked the idea that Gwen had two kids by Norman Osborn. And yet for some strange reason, Gabriel Stacy hung around long enough to go up against his half-brother, Harry, in a four-part miniseries, American Son. After that though, even the writers at Marvel have done their best to put everything connected to Sins Past out of their memory.
Still, things could’ve been much worse. The original pitch J. Michael Straczynski proposed? That Gabriel and Sarah Stacy were the illegitimate offspring of Gwen Stacy and Peter Parker.