How Marvel Comics' Editors Ruined Hobgoblin

[Music] all right hello welcome to comic tropes i'm your host chris let me set the stage it was late 1981 and marvel comics decided it needed to shake things up with spider-man writer roger stern decided that what would help would be introducing a new villain and he ended up having a hit on his hands when he introduced the hobgoblin this villain was powerful he was calculating and perhaps most importantly his true identity was shrouded in mystery but unfortunately this is the story of how editorial interference led to the eventual reveal of that identity landing with a thud this is the story of writers and editors not trusting one another it's a total fiasco and readers at the time may not have been privy to the behind the scenes drama but now we can look back with hindsight and the advantage of modern day interviews to piece together this complete mess today let's take a look at the story of the hobgoblin [Music] the spider-man title sold well in 1981 but it had been steadily declining since it launched in 1962 minus the occasional spurt for a big event for instance the recent edition of his black costume was a hit but numbers had steadily declined from around 340 000 copies a month when the title launched to about 242 000 copies a month in 1981. writer roger stern had been doing well on spider-man's secondary title spectacular spider-man and editor tom defalco moved him up to the main book amazing spider-man one thing stern did which resonated well was adding a brand new villain hobgoblin most of spider-man's classic enemies had been created by steve ditko with stan lee and a handful more were created throughout the 60s when artist john ramita stepped in but after stan lee left there weren't as many iconic villains created there was morbius arguably in 1971 hammerhead in 1972 punisher in 1974 and maybe black cat in 1979 but mostly stories reused classic villains one thing roger stern did with his writing was not rely on what had been done before vulture was the only classic villain that he used opting to create new threats that pushed spider-man in new ways there were new characters but the tone was the same maybe a bit less dialogue than the stan lee days but consistent with those stories stern was the bridge between silver age spider-man and the modern age faithful to characterization and use of the supporting cast he refocused peter parker's life on his work at the daily bugle among the cast of characters there aside from stalwarts like jay jonah jameson peter's grouchy publisher who despises spider-man stern used reporter ned leeds ned will play an important part in hobgoblin's story later on so remember that name ned was created by stan lee and steve ditko back in 1964's issue 18 of amazing spider-man in the comics ned was a good journalist and eventually married peter's first crush betty brandt in the current marvel cinematic universe ned leeds is the best friend of peter parker though his look and personality is largely based on the character of genki lee who is the best friend of the miles morales spider-man stern helped peter evolve he was still in every man who was always on the back foot with work and personal life challenges but someone who is now fully committed to the hero life in spectacular spider-man stern began writing on the title in 1982 and created several new supporting characters but one i want you to remember for later is roderick kingsley who was an amoral businessman in the fashion industry among stern's classic stories were a battle against the unstoppable juggernaut and the tear-jerker the kid who collects spider-man however his lasting contribution is likely the creation of villain hobgoblin along with artist john ramita jr so first what i'd like to do is describe to you some of the important elements of hobgoblin's origin and his early stories and then we'll be able to talk about the behind the scenes drama about the creation of this character [Music] issue 238 of amazing spider-man features a common crook on the run from spider-man who loses the hero in some sewer tunnels by chance he comes across an old hideout of spider-man's late enemy the green goblin the criminal opts to sell the information and access to the gear and journals of norman osborne's green goblin to a mystery buyer the mystery buyer even kills this common crook to cover his tracks stern was dedicated to keeping the true identity of hobgoblin a mystery with his goal being to keep it a secret for 26 issues one longer than the stan lee original green goblin mystery stern never got to see that to completion however he did tell some great stories with this new adversary and while he may have modified green goblin's gear this enemy was very different green goblin had been driven mad by his goblin serum the hobgoblin was very much sane more calculating and careful and stern knew who was behind the mask issue 239 features the first confrontation between hobgoblin and spiderman hobgoblin had been reading more of osborne's storehouses for gear and supplies maybe journals which attracts spider-man's attention and they come to blows hobgoblin has upgraded the technology he has at hand but spider-man still gets the upper hand as spider-man moves to unmask him we hear hobgoblin think about how he must not be unmasked for the disgrace would be too great this panel along with a page of the mysterious man behind the mask shown to the reader only in silhouette piqued reader's interest hobgoblin wisely retreats from battle realizing he is exhausted and there must have been more to green goblin than just the technology in order to physically go toe-to-toe with spider-man hobgoblin returned in issues 244 and 245 more of osborne's company warehouses are being robbed and spider-man tracks the robbers down and begins fighting them however a man in black uses a pumpkin bomb to start a fire and attacks spider-man with hobgoblin's new razor bats before driving away in a truck spider-man stays behind to save the criminals from the fire the man in black shows up at a motel where hobgoblin is recovering the man in black was merely one of hobgoblin's minions lefty donovan and the men who had been used as robbers were used as a distraction so that lefty could steal chemicals the following issue is the first of three covers to promise to unmask the hobgoblin marvel teased the readers with this a lot but it worked the second of this two-parter story shows a mystery man mixing the chemicals obtained in the previous issue putting together the goblin serum from osborne's old journals they explode in his face and a second man drags him out of the house which is caught on fire the house then explodes with the second man inside the mystery man lies in a hospital bandaged for weeks meanwhile peter parker sorts out his life and commits to being a freelance photographer full time planning to continue his graduate studies in the future his friends and coworkers betty and ned leeds warn him that his new path may be tougher than he thinks the man in the hospital awakens and escapes suiting up as the hobgoblin he flies to times square and begins to cause chaos spider-man shows up and has a much tougher time because hobgoblin now has super strength still spider-man subdues and unmasks the hobgoblin only to realize it's minor criminal lefty donovan before spider-man can learn more donovan's hobgoblin gear explodes killing him in a coda to the issue we see that the real hobgoblin was monitoring everything to see how the goblin serum would affect someone he's not prepared to take it himself until it's refined to keep him sane his plot had the added bonus of making it seem that the hobgoblin is dead stern's final hobgoblin arc took place in issues 249-250 in these issues wealthy men are summoned to an exclusive club by a mysterious man blackmailing them among those summoned are peter's best friend harry osborne boss j jonah jameson and fashion mogul roderick kingsley also showing up uninvited is wilson fisk the kingpin of crime in new york hobgoblin appears and threatens to uncover the men's secrets unless they pay him a modest recurring fee but when harry lashes out at hobgoblin it's revealed that the man they've all been talking to was just a simple animatronic the real hobgoblin crashes in to take over but spider-man is right behind him and they fight this time the hobgoblin wins the fight and is about to kill spider-man but he is saved from a killing blow by a kingpin of all people hobgoblin escapes because he doesn't want to confront kingpin and his men kingpin tells spider-man that he does not want to deal with hobgoblin and placed one of spider-man's tracers on hobgoblin it allows spider-man to track down the hobgoblin and they continue their battle in the fight norman osborne's journals are burnt up to hobgoblin's fear and rage with nothing of value left at his hideout the hobgoblin escapes in a tricked-out van battling spidey until they crash off a dock into the river spider-man escapes the sinking vehicle and it explodes with spidey finding hobgoblin's mask but no body these three hobgoblin story arcs were all that roger stern wrote for the character in amazing spider-man however he was planning to eventually reveal who was behind hobgoblin's mask but he ended up quitting the title because he didn't get along with his new editor originally roger stern was getting along very well with his editor tom defalco however danny fingerth was placed as the new editor on the spider-man titles and the two just butted heads roger stern decided to quit before he could reveal who was behind hobgoblin's mask [Music] stern built up not just the mystery behind hobgoblin but his menace hobgoblin got a clean win in a fight against spider-man in his last appearance by stern and before that showed that he was more than willing to use and sacrifice henchmen to lower the risk to himself stern's plan was to reveal that the hobgoblin was roderick kingsley however he hadn't laid too much of the groundwork before he left one small example of his plan is a fleeting mention in issue 250 where kingsley wonders where his brother was stern intended for roderick to have a look-alike brother though not a twin that he would use as a devil for him when he appeared as the hobgoblin cern explained his idea saying quote roderick was a manipulator a totally amoral businessman who used people and then tossed them to the side as i was scripting amazing spider-man number 238 i realized that the voice i was developing for the man who was about to become the hobgoblin was the same as kingsley's voice that was when i realized that he was my ideal choice end quote but what stern hadn't counted on was butting heads with editor danny fingeroff stern spoke about it saying quote as far as spider-man was concerned tom and i were absolutely on the same wavelength when he left it just wasn't the same without him i didn't have to explain every little detail to tom the way i did with danny i could see that if we kept working together it would drive at least one of us crazy maybe both of us after about six months i called john ramita jr to discuss it with him and he said he was thinking of leaving amazing to spend more time on the x-men and that made it easier to leave the book end quote and so danny fingerth placed tom defalco previously an editor for amazing spider-man on the book as the new writer tom defalco knew what roger stern's plan was for revealing roderick kingsley behind the hobgoblin but he didn't really like that idea he didn't like the idea of an identico brother that wasn't even a twin and he had his own plan that he began to lay out for who would be behind the hobgoblin's mask defalco's writing on spider-man focused on street crime using villains like kingpin hammerhead and a new player the rose the rose and hobgoblin team up for much of defalco's run working to take down the other players in organized crime the rose wore a simple purple mask editor tom brevort wrote about defalco's plans for the rose saying quote tom basically said that he had conceived the rose to be essentially a middle management crime figure because he thought there'd have to be characters like that and when he started writing him he didn't have any particular secret identity it wasn't a mystery he was deliberately building but then when the readers grabbed on to it in the ripple effect of the hobgoblin identity mystery tom says that he decided he needed to make the rose some known character and he settled on roderick kingsley who was in the series at the time but the rose's identity didn't get revealed until tom was off the book so it wound up being somebody else end quote ironically defalco planned to reveal the hobgoblin as richard fisk the son of the kingpin but later when the next writer on spider-man revealed who the rose was it was he who was richard fisk the hobgoblin's identity still hadn't been revealed from issues 259 through 261 we see hobgoblin and rose form a new partnership as well as hobgoblin kidnapping harry osborne's wife and mary jane watson hobgoblin tries to use this leverage to blackmail harry osborne into obtaining more journals he ultimately does obtain a single one but spider-man saves everyone and hobgoblin learns the information inside the journal is redundant he then pledges to forget about the journals and forge his own path forward defalco used hobgoblin for a second story a two-parter across issues 275 and 276. this time around hobgoblin has some new weaponry and goes up against spider-man gaining a decisive win spider-man is in his black suit but it's cloth not the venom symbiote just to be clear in the second issue spider-man recovers and in a fight he covers the goblin's face in webbing the hobgoblin rips off his mask and flees into a warehouse with spider-man right behind spider-man dives through the flooring and nabs an unconscious hobgoblin only to pull off the mask to see the face of his old friend flash thompson underneath of course the end of the story shows us that the real hobgoblin is still out there and he simply framed flash to keep the heat off of himself it's worth noting that the editors on the spider-man titles had been reassigned again for these issues and moving forward defalco was now being edited by jim owsley today known as christopher priest priest was only 22 years old placed in a position editing defalco who had been a senior editor and writer at marvel for years the thinking was probably that the spider titles were in the hands of seasoned pros so the editor just needed to guide things priest has never spoken about this tumultuous time in interviews but he did write about it obliquely in his own blog one thing he said was that quote it was criminally stupid to have a 22 year old neophyte editor edit his own boss end quote he also said quote if i had to do it over again i would never have accepted the appointment as editor of the spider-man franchise i made a lot of mistakes i heard a lot of people i lost a lot of friends it's a difficult thing for me to discuss end quote and now we enter the final act of this story where hobgoblin's identity will be revealed it gets ugly at this point it seems like a lot of feelings were hurt a lot of friendships were ended a lot of the people that were involved in the spider-man books at this time are very angry with one another um it's pretty sad it seems to involve some deliberate sabotage against at least one person according to everyone else that was involved in the books at the time [Music] the next hobgoblin story is a five-part story about a gang war across organized crime figures in new york including hobgoblin and the rose kingpin and hammerhead among others issues 284 and 285 give defalco a plotting credit but priest himself took over scripting duties and writes the final three issues credited as jim mousley at the same time priest wrote a spider-man one-shot spider-man vs wolverine that takes place just after these five issues but before the following monthly issue of amazing spider-man he did this quietly without telling any of the other writers on the spider-man books the specifics of hobgoblin's actions and characterization this time around are not as important as what happened behind the scenes because editor priest decided to sabotage tom defalco's stated goal of revealing the hobgoblin the writers of the spider-man books went to a retreat and priest asked defalco point blank who was behind hobgoblin's mask defalco stated that it was going to be ned leeds peter parker's co-worker at the daily bugle and ultimately that's what christopher priest wrote he killed off ned leeds in the spider-man vs wolverine comic and then had ned leeds revealed as the hobgoblin in issue 289 which he assigned peter david to write priests also had defalco and friends fired off of the spider-man title immediately before the one-shot issue with wolverine was released in actuality defalco of course planned to reveal that richard fisk was the man behind hobgoblin but he never got his opportunity because christopher priest believed that it was intended to be ned leeds and that's what he wrote and that's what became canon at the time it was a total mess a priest also ended up revealing the rose's identity and for that he used richard fisk none of these writers were using roderick kingsley in 2009 back issue number 35 interviewed the parties involved on the spiderman titles at that time to clear up what had happened priest did not comment peter david had been writing spectacular spider-man and was hired to write amazing spider-man starting with issue 289 directly after the gang war storyline trying to retroactively explain the ned leeds reveal he ultimately told the story of ned leeds being surprised and overpowered by the assassins while simultaneously unveiling hobgoblin again this time it wasn't a mystery it was mercenary jason massendale who took over the empty suit having been in the title for quite a while as second string villain jack o'lantern david summarized what went down behind the scenes saying quote owsley comes into my office i was working at marvel in the direct sales department at the time and he says we're going to go out for lunch and discuss who the hobgoblin is going to be and i said what are you talking about the hobgoblin is ned leeds and he said no he's not ned leeds and i said what do you mean we all discussed this at the writers conference and those are the stories that tom has been writing and owsley says tom's not doing the book anymore and it's not going to be ned leeds and i'm going to tell you who it's going to be so we went out to lunch and owsley reveals to me that he's killing off ned leeds in spider-man vs wolverine one shot and i said what the bleep do you mean ned leeds is the hobgoblin and he said no and i said why are you doing this and owsley said to piss off the falco and i said well that's kind of juvenile look you've got to rethink this and he said it's already drawn defalco commented on being let go saying quote owsley killed off ned to screw up my continuity then he decided to fire me instead he thought he'd throw me a curveball by killing off ned i would have been annoyed about it but it wouldn't have been a curveball for me because i never intended for the hobgoblin to be ned anyway i just knew i couldn't trust owsley and this proved it on priest's blog post he strangely wrote that at the time quote suddenly ned leeds was the hobgoblin a move that infuriated roger stern but one that i had absolutely nothing to do with end quote in that issue of back issue stern defalco and david all replied to this stern commented quote i wasn't infuriated at all i saw it as an opportunity i realized that the stuff established in number 289 could serve as the foundation for a whole new story end quote defalco and david both point out that they don't see how priests could have had nothing to do with it since he was the editor at the time and so peter david retroactively told a story that explained how ned leeds had become the hobgoblin he said quote i was satisfied with what i wrote because i was thrust into a situation that i absolutely could not win it's the most insane project i've ever been involved with it was a story that i did because there was absolutely no other way to do it end quote meanwhile priest wrote two issues of web of spider-man to explain more backstory on ned leeds apparently as ned leeds worked on his story to take down the kingpin he got so mad that he decided to turn to crime to get revenge on kingpin as well as teaming up with the kingpin's son to do it i'll be honest i see that motivation as kind of weak and i also never really saw ned leeds as having the charismatic personality that the hobgoblin clearly does on top of that i don't understand how ned leeds had the money that hobgoblin clearly does because hobgoblin buys information he hires henchmen he upgrades equipment something i don't understand how ned leeds could have plus ned leeds was married with a full-time job it just didn't make sense to me it fell flat for me as a reader at the time i think it fell flat for a lot of readers at the time and at this point i don't think hobgoblin ever recovered to become a top-tier villain ever again [Music] the best i can say about this time is that overall things improved moving forward and the single issue of spider-man vs wolverine in a vacuum is a cool cold war espionage story it's just that ned leads reveal in the middle that comes out of left field and does not connect at all the five-part gang war story also features the first issue of spider-man that eric larson ever illustrated in general all of the issues with hobgoblin have strong artwork the early stuff with stern had the writer paired with john romita jr in his early days and you can witness the artist grow from a solid but generic marvel style into his own confident artwork there are some covers by mike zech that look great too but what made hobgoblin cool was mostly from the first man to write him roger stern he made hobgoblin a schemer a manipulator someone quite a bit different from green goblin the mystery of his identity captured the reader's imaginations and if you go back you'll see speculation across the letters pages of the book over a decade later marvel let roger stern write a mini-series called hobgoblin lives it retroactively explains that roderick kingsley was the original hobgoblin and that he had brainwashed ned leeds into thinking that he was hobgoblin that does seem like a trick hobgoblin would employ since he'd used devils before but as to how a fashion mogul was able to reverse engineer the goblin formula i couldn't say regardless while it makes a lot more sense than ned leeds it was just too many years removed from the original story to make many waves with readers in the mid 80s when hobgoblin was created the mystery identity was definitely a cool element of his character but ultimately that wasn't the only thing that made him cool he was hobgoblin yes he was mysterious but he was also confident he was charismatic he was cunning and he was very capable and ultimately that was more than enough thank you so much for watching this episode i'm going to be back next week with my year-end wrap-up telling you what i thought the best books of 2021 were i am now trying to make youtube a full-time thing so if you want to support that for as little as a dollar please consider hitting the link in the description below to check out my patreon that would mean a lot and until i see you next time keep reading comics thanks for watching this video if you liked it please consider hitting like and subscribe if you'd like to support the show there are merchandise links beneath the youtube video and you can always hit join on youtube or visit comic tropes on patreon to get access to special perks [Music] 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Channel: ComicTropes

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Length: 28min 47sec (1727 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 21 2021