Bart Hamilton was the first non-Osborn to don the Green Goblin mantle. He was also a rather lame Goblin, which is probably the reason why he is rarely mentioned and hasn't been brought back from the dead, which is all too common in Marvel comics. Hamilton was Harry's psychiatrist first introduced back in "Amazing Spider-Man 167" to help cure Harry of any left over insanity he might have left over from when he briefly became the Goblin. Hamilton put Harry under hypnosis and was able to learn all of the hidden Green Goblin hideouts. Hamilton decided he could use the identity of the Goblin to write a detailed essay on criminals, from the very point of a criminal! But like Norman and Harry, Hamilton became obessesed with being the Goblin and went crazy. Big surprise. He held Harry hostage in his 'secret lair' and tried to unite New York's underworld. He got his ass handed to him, however, by Spider-Man and Harry and blew himself up in a laughable attempt to make Harry apologize for insulting the identity of the Green Goblin.
The entire Hamilton story was pretty pointless. I don't understand why the Spider-Man team felt the need to let another person become the Green Goblin. The story could have had Harry as the Goblin and been twice as effective, and much more personal. Instead, we get lame, good doctor gone bad attempting to be the Goblin who punches like a girl, as shown in the picture above.
Our next imposter Goblin is Phil Urich, nephew to the hard nosed Bugle reporter, Ben Urich. Phil was a whiny, annoying wannabe hero who faced up against wannabe super-villians in his short lived thirteen issue series. Phil was a rather useless intern at the Bugle who stumbled upon Harry Osborn's secret lair (kind of like George Hill did back in "ASM 238") and after freaking out because he saw a rat (gasp!) stumbled into a vat of chemicals which raised his strength, but only when he had his super cybernetic mask on! Anyway, Phil proceeds to beat some ass after he hijacks the rest of Harry's inventions, then spends the rest of the series fighting second string villians and whining about how the girl of his dreams doesn't even know he exists. Which isn't very hard because he has like, three lines of dialogue every issue! He spends the rest of his time thinking everything!
Green Goblin IV was a good idea done badly. Which is why this stinker was canceled after only thirteen issues. I have to admit, I did have a bit of a bias against the series, simply because I didn't like the idea of the Green Goblin, not being Spider-Man's greatest foe. Granted, I actually loved the new costume they used (not as much as the original though) but they had to make Phil Urich such an absolutley unlikeable character and fill the book with stupid crap like "My dreaded LUNATIC LAUGH!!!" (try saying that with a straight face) and some of the worst villians spawned from comics, (Angelface, Steel Slammer...shudder) Hopefully, Green Goblin IV will stay out of action.
Eventually, after the relaunch, the identity of the fifth Goblin was revealed to be...Harry Osborn....or rather a genetic construct of Harry or a clone of him or something. The important thing is that it wasn't human to begin with and eventually turned into a big pile of goo. Yes, I must agree with Madgoblin, that his identity was rather stupid and forced. Well, the Spidey writers apparently wanted to focus on Norman being the Goblin again and needed to dispose of the rather useless Green Goblin V.
Hmmmmm....where do I start with this one. When Norman Osborn returned from the dead, he tried to convince the public that he in fact, was not the Green Goblin. Okay, that's a pretty logical plan. So, to do this, he sent in a stand in Goblin to kidnap his grandson and call him all sorts of mean names in front of the Daily Bugle staff. Okay, I'm still buying it. Anyway, Spidey gives him a severe beat down and we don't see him again until Osborn orders him to break Roderick Kingsley, aka the Hobgoblin, out of prison. It appears that this new Goblin has all of Norman Osborn's powers and is expirenced at being the Goblin already. Lots of guesses were made at who this new Green Goblin could be but none of them were right.
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