Owned and run by ruthless industrialist Norman Osborn, AKA Green Goblin, Oscorp is a leading New York firm that specializes in robotics and chemical manufacturing, which he often uses to his advantage.
Hostile Takeover
Norman Osborn and his teacher, Professor Mendel Stromm, co-found the New York firm Osborn Industries to specialize in chemical manufacturing via Osborn Chemicals, which eventually became known as Oscorp. Oscorp leads in the areas of research and development, including robotics and later aviation.
Shredding Papers
Norman acts as Oscorp’s CEO and provides much of its initial funding. While Stromm’s research provides a basis for a serum that would enhance the strength in others, Norman seeks the formula for himself. Conveniently, Norman finds that Stromm had been embezzling money and has his business partner jailed, gaining control of the firm.
Taking the formula, Norman goes mad and becomes the maniacal Green Goblin and seemingly perishes while in a battle against his nemesis Peter Parker, AKA Spider-Man. After he’s pronounced dead, the company passes to Norman’s son Harry Osborn, but secretly alive, keeps a watchful eye on his family and company. Seeing that Harry runs the company into the ground and experiences mental health issues, Norman returns to the spotlight with a clever story to explain his absence and resumes his role at the company.
In the aftermath of the Skurll invasion on Earth, Norman replaces the transgovernmental intelligence agency S.H.I.E.L.D. with H.A.M.M.E.R., which acts as a cover for his criminal endeavors. He hires Oscorp to provide the world with defensive technology and it’s not the last time Norman operates Oscorp behind the scenes.
Company Rivals
Oscorp is rivaled by Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man’s Stark Industries and Obadiah Stane, AKA Iron Monger’s international munitions company. The biggest threat to Oscorp’s function as a business is sometimes its own leaders such as Norman and his son Harry, but also Norman’s nemesis Spider-Man, who often faces Norman’s alter ego Green Goblin and tries to stop his nefarious endeavors.
Employees
Aside from Norman’s immediate and extended family, who are a part of the company in some leadership capacity, and the former co-owner Stromm, many scientists are employed by Oscorp. Stromm’s former research assistant Nels Van Adder works for the company as well until he volunteers as one of Norman’s earliest test subjects, transformed into the killer Proto-Goblin.
After Chemical Engineer and superhuman criminal Mark Raxton, AKA Molten Man, turns a corner, he gets a job through his stepsister Liz Allan’s new husband Harry Osborn at Oscorp (then called Osborn Industries). When his form becomes unstable, Harry uses Oscorp’s resources to develop a cure.
Behind the scenes, Norman also employs the Enforcers, Fancy Dan Brito, Montana, and Raymond Bloch, AKA the Ox, who use violence to get him ahead of the company’s opposition or even acquire the opposition’s properties such as Malone’s flophouse.
Other henchmen include Cleavon Twain, AKA Headsman, whom Norman hires to do his dirty work, giving him gear and a battle ax, and Mr. Krane, AKA Agent Krane, who is tasked with stealing the Carnage symbiote.
Oscorp’s Archives
When Private detective Mac Gargan, AKA Scorpion (later Venom), stole military robotics plans from Norman for competitor Obadiah Stane, it caused Osborn Industries to lose a lucrative contract. However, the loss pushed the company into biological enhancements research.
Norman rose in power and wealth by participating in a collusion enabling the creation of powerful opponents to challenge the Super Hero community, thereby offering corrupt corporations a means to distract the heroes from probing into their illegal affairs. One failure in this regard involved using Osborn Industries employee Nels Van Adder as a human test subject, transforming him into the disfigured “Proto-Goblin.” Osborn dodged accusations of wrongdoing from his head of security, Arthur Stacy, and his brother Police Detective George Stacy.
After Norman had his business partner Professor Mendel Stromm jailed for embezzling funds, Norman gained full control of the firm, he discovered Stromm’s notes for a strength-enhancing serum. Norman tested the serum on himself in his private lab, but the unstable concoction exploded in his face, leaving him hospitalized for weeks. He emerged smarter and superhumanly strong, but at the cost of his sanity. He became the Green Goblin and created weapons using Oscorp’s facilities and resources such as his armor, pumpkin bombs, and glider.
As the Green Goblin, he often battles with Spider-Man, and killed Gwen Stacy which resulted in a vicious battle with the wall-crawler. Though seemingly killed, impaled by his own glider, his son Harry Osborn became the successor to his father as president of Osborn Industries.
Though pronounced dead, Norman’s body regenerated and revived while in the morgue, due to the healing properties of the Goblin formula. Norman fled to Europe, allowing the world to believe him dead while secretly monitoring Harry and manipulating Spider-Man’s life as Green Goblin while Harry became successor to his father as president of Osborn Industries. Though his time with Oscorp led the company into financial hardship as he dealt with mental health issues and his own difficult relationship with the Goblin formula. It apparently led to his death, but Norman replaced him with a duplicate or clone of Harry who continued his life in his originator’s place.
Harry later hired his wife’s stepbrother and chemical engineer Mark Raxton—the Super Villain Molten Man—at Oscorp to help put his criminal past behind him. Harry faced his young son Normie getting kidnapped, divorced Liz and two others, and completes a year-long stay in a European rehab. Afterward, he takes charge of Oscorp, focusing their research and development on finding a cure for Raxton, who’s condition had deteriorated.
Possibly inspired by Harry’s failures in life and business, Norman ended his ruse and returned to the USA to wage his private war against Spider-Man more directly. Norman returned to public view with a carefully contrived story and resumed his role as a wealthy executive, reclaiming control of his industrial empire (renamed Oscorp) from his daughter-in-law, Liz Osborn (née Allan). With his financial control of Oscorp and subsidiary Multivex restored, Norman launched a hostile takeover of the Daily Bugle, augmenting the paper’s attacks on Spider-Man and eventually causing Editor-in-Chief Joe Robertson to quit.
When Oscorp employees started to disappear, it attracted the attention of Daily Bugle reporter Terri Kidder. When Kidder confronted Norman, the Goblin slew her, prompting the Daily Bugle’s Pulse reporter Jessica Jones, then pregnant with Luke Cage’s baby, to continue the investigation. The Green Goblin’s violent response to Jones and the police resulted in him being knocked out by Cage, arrested and publicly exposed. Norman escaped en route to prison and took hostages at a church, demanding Spider-Man commit a televised suicide, but Spider-Man defeated him, and Norman was incarcerated. Though he had concocted a plan years earlier that allowed him an escape but only temporarily. Taken into S.H.I.E.L.D. custody, Norman stayed there until the Superhuman Registration Act went into effect and Norman was pardoned and offered leadership of a new government-sponsored Thunderbolts team with a small contingent of Super Villains to round up rogue heroes who refused to register. He continued his personal war against Spider-Man.
Later, Spider-Man and Anti-Venom (Eddie Brock, AKA Venom), attacked the Thunderbolts at Oscorp in Jersey City, while Harry confronted his father Norman regarding the attacks. Harry discovered his father in a Green Goblin costume, and a room full of captured human test subjects Norman claimed to know nothing about. While the captives were liberated, Norman detonated the building.
Since Norman’s double life as the Green Goblin was exposed, Oscorp stocks passed to Harry and Liz’s son Normie, and Liz merged those stocks with her company Allan Chemical, combining properties from Horizon labs to fall under the new name, Alchemax. Though Alchemax’s executive Mason Banks was secretly Norman who had facial reconstructive surgery and plotted to leave an empire for his grandson.
