Wow..just discovered this forum..very cool....M. Stern's work on Avengers was my comic book highlight as a kid...classic run!!

Question: How did you plan on resolving the Hobgoblin mystery? Was the branwashing machine always a part of it? The Flash Thompson frame up?

How long did you plan on drawing out the mystery past issue 250? Another year or more?

I loved the whole Hobgoblin lives mini...another classic!

Thanks in advance!!

(Edited to correct slip up..meant Flash Thompson not Flash Gordon..thanks James!)

I'd read a Spidey book that had Flash Gordon in it.

The Hobgoblin resolution was one of those goals that was still off in the future, when I left Amazing. I had planned to draw the Hobgoblin mystery out at least an issue longer than Stan had drawn out the Green Goblin mystery.

And Paul Smith once told me that I should never reveal who the Hobgoblin was.

As if happened, it was 14 years until the secret came out.

Glad you enjoyed it.

-- Uncle Rog

Is this the part where I post Peter David's explanation of What Really Happened™ again?

He gave me permission to do that, you know. In perpetuity.

I'm curious Frank

I live to serve.

===================================

Subject: Re: Hobgoblin question
Date: 9/6/00 7:37 AM Central Daylight Time
From: Padguy
Message-id: <20000906083751.02824.00000292@ng-bh1.aol.com>


>The fact that the death of Ned Leeds and the revelation that he was the
>Hobgoblin happened right on top of each other always struck me as a bit
>awkward...even rushed, or forced. Almost as though it was a last-minute
>decision. It wasn't very much in keeping with the kind of big, dramatic
>unmasking that Marvel seemed to have been building toward for years.
>
>Peter David wrote the original revelation issue, so maybe I'll go ask him
>about this on his board.
>-------------------
>
>And now I have. Any input on this point?
>
Basically, here's what happened:

There was a Spider-Man writer's summit, and it was decided there (since Roger was no longer connected with the books) that the HG would be Ned. DeFalco started doing a series of stories building up to that revelation.

But then DeFalco and editor Jim Owsley had a falling out and DeFalco departed the books. Owsley then sat me down and said, "The HG is going to be the Foreigner, and you're going to write the story in which that's revealed."

I said, "The hell he is, and the hell I will. It makes no sense. He's Ned."

Owsley said, "Well, here's the problem. Too many fans think Ned is the Hobgoblin. In order to close that door, I wrote this Spidey/Wolverine one shot and Ned gets killed by terrorists."

I nearly had a stroke. I said, "But...you CAN'T! Ned's the Hobgoblin."

Owsley said, "If you don't want the Foreigner to be the Hobgoblin, you come up with something else."

So I re-read Tom's run, looking for an out. There wasn't one. Tom had been too thorough. It was obvious why all the fans were figuring out it was Ned; there was no one else it could possibly be. I went out to lunch with Owsley, totally flummoxed about what to do. I said, "Wait...who kills Ned in the one-shot?"

"Terrorists," said Owsley. "The death isn't shown. Peter just finds the body."

And that's when it hit me.

I said, "I've got it. Ned will be the Hobgoblin. It won't be terrorists who killed him; it'll be the Foreigner's men. And we'll reveal it four months later. And for those four months, all those fans who were convinced Ned is the HG will be convinced that Ned is the one person who couldn't POSSIBLY be the HG, because who would be stupid enough to knock off the main villain months before revealing his identity? It's never been done. And no one
could ever do it again."

And Owsley went for it.

And that's the God's honest truth of how it happened.

PAD

So, was it the original idea of Kingsley being the Hobgoblin? I think I read in the life of Reilly that you never told Glenn Greenberg if that was from the beginning.

From the moment I scripted that first story, I knew that Roderick Kingsley was the Hobgoblin.

-- Uncle Rog

That's great, because you managed to clear everything other writers have told all those years after your run. An even greater bravo to you.

One question about that: Why you killed Machendale? I liked his character, I liked that he was a complete loser actually. It's not that I wanted him alive, but I think he was nice as the second Hobgoblin, and I would actually like to know why it was necessary to kill him.

I hadn't originally planned to have the Hoblgoblin kill Macendale.

In fact, when Tom Brevoort and Glenn Greenberg approached me about writing Spider-Man: Hobgoblin Lives, Macendale had just been souped up with cybernetics in the Spider-Man books.

So I told them, "I'll handle this any way you want. I can have Macendale show up and beat my guy in the course of this story...I can have my guy die at the end, if you want. It's your call."

And they said, "We're having a big Spider-Man planning meeting tomorrow. We'll talk it over and get back to you."

A couple days later, Glenn called me back and said, "Let's put it this way...you can open the story with your guy blowing Macendale away."

I thought that was maybe a little too abrupt.

So I saved it for Page 27.

-- Uncle Rog

I'm not sure if you ever said: who, if anyone, did you tell about the Hobgoblin's identity?

Hmm, I see, I guess it's the whole "we can't have multiple versions of the same character running around" thing, although I think it wasn't necessary to kill him. They also had the original Green Goblin back, so there were too many Goblins I guess. Do you liked at all any of the other Hobgoblin incarnations, from the moment you left?

I thought that Tom DeFlaco and Ren Frenz did a great job.

-- Uncle Rog

Fixed.

Who?

In Secret War there was a new hobgoblin that never explained who he was. So let's say you are writing now Spider-Man who would you revealed him to be? Please, don't answer with a "I wouldn't make a new one to begin with"...

Forgive me, but I've read only two or three new Marvel comics in the past...oh...6-7years. I'm not sure what Secret War you're talking about.

-- Uncle Rog

Bendis wrote a mini called Secret War. It's actually about Fury going underground, and some of the high tech criminals been sponsored by the latverian gov. There was an unnamed Hobgoblin there.

Yeah but that series had some serious continuity mistakes. Some villains were dead and some had the files and names out of date.

Eh, and the premise wasn't original, behind the technological villains were Justin Hammer and the Tinkered at least in the 80, now this seems forgotten.

Actually they said that the tinkerer was behind them, and Latveria was behind the Tinkerer. A lot of people seem to be behind someone else...

If anyone wants to read a great account of the genesis of the Hobgoblin character, pick up the new issue of Back Issue (#35). There's a "roundtable" discussion with our own Unca Rog among others. The story behind the story is as tumutuous as the actual stories themselves!

Nice, lets see i can manage to get that magazine.

Reading again this topic..




Rats! that was the reason behind that such good story... I read it when it came and it was one my preferred Spiderman stories when i was young. In fact i remember that I looked for years for anything else wrote by that Jim Owlsey, untill I got internet and I realized that he had changed his name.