Review by Frank Plowright

Red Goblin didn’t start well in It Runs in the Family, and Nature/Nurture is the second and final collection of young Normie Osborn’s difficult childhood. Well, to date.

A while back Norman Osborn, Normie’s grandfather just so there’s no confusion, gathered the isolated and disenchanted street kids of New York and formed a gang called Goblin Nation. Norman is now sane, but Goblin Nation still exists, and they’re proving troublesome, although not as troublesome as the symbiote Rascal, which is increasingly challenging Normie’s control when they’re Red Goblin. The good thing about that, though, is that with Rascal a constant disorienting presence, instead of ten year old Normie’s dialogue being that of a university graduate, he’s now actually sounding his age.

With that rectified, Alex Pakmadel’s plot becomes more convincing. The best aspect of the previous volume was Normie’s relationship with his grandfather, but there’s less of that here, and greater concentration on the Goblin Nation where there’s an unhealthy reflection of that connection. What was previously just a bunch of feral kids now has an emotional pull.

Jan Bazaldua’s art was a highlight of It Runs in the Family, but she only draws a little over a chapter of this, with Chris Campana illustrating three. He’s equally dynamic, with his best art coming as Rascal meets Venom. That cover scene only occurs in the final chapter, by which time we’ve already had appearances from Miles Morales and Gold Goblin.

This is a considerably better volume than the first. The threats have weight, there’s some tension, and the bonding between Normie and Rascal throws up new and interesting problems, while there was never any problem with the art apart from Bazaldua perhaps being too horrific. Nature/Nurture is very much an unexpected recovery.