All things Hobgoblin 1 1

[ft88]

I'm sure there's an ASM 238 somewhere but more than that I consider the Hobgoblin storyline to be defining turning point of Spiderman.

 

Here's a pretty good link outlining its importance. I liked his review quite a bit.

 

http://www.chasingamazingblog.com/2013/07/11/amazing-spider-man-238-original-hobgoblin-saga-part-1/

 

About the only complaint about the Hobgoblin you could have is that he isn't all that original. I'll counterpoint that by bringing up great characters that aren't original either. Thor, Mr Fantastic, Kitty Pride, All the DC Silver Age heroes reissued and many more. Really, the quality of a character is what's done with him over time not just the 1st appearance. And that's what makes Hobgoblin so good. From 238-289 to PPSS 85 and the ASM v Wolverine one shot; this 5 year action-drama was second to none.

 

I'll admit my bias in that I basically started collecting as a teenager in the mid 1980s so these are pretty formative. And I fondly think of this storyline as the last great one that wasn't just crushed by crossovers, which started just after this with the Death of Kraven and Xmen craziness.

 

Coming up, some pics and a question.

 

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[Bosco685]

Hobgoblin is my favorite Spidey villain above all others. I always enjoyed the twists and turns that made those stories really suspenseful and worth reading.

 

Spidey 250's cover is just awesome!

[ft88]

So my question refers to the Tattooz in issue 238.

 

The insert is clearly part of the book in that it is stapled and can't be removed. At least on all the ones I've ever owned. Does anyone have an issue where the insert is loose, and legitimately so?

 

Also, how do you get the tattooz out (and/or back in) without messing up the insert. Or for that matter the comic.

 

The CGC label says "Tattooz inside" for a Blue label and I assume that means the insert.

One Green label will say "Tattooz missing from insert. Incomplete."

I couldn't find the language for a missing insert.

 

And of course the FF 252 has the Tattooz if they need to be replaced (though not sure how one does that)

 

 

[ft88]

Pretty much all the full hobgoblin covers are classics but for the 289. What a lost opportunity for such a headline conclusion.

 

The Gang Wars saga was a pretty good yarn with the hobgoblin covers only average.

[MK Ultra]

+1

[FrankCastle]

I grew up at the same time, purchasing Amazing Spider-Man 264 as my first Spidey. I soon learned of the Hobgoblin, and had to go back to the only comic store in town and search out those back issues. His entire run was incredible, the only knock I'll give it is the ending. It's funny to look back though in Thunder Bay, Ontario Canada, issue 250-259 were always harder to find than 238 and 239, which I could have bought piles of (was 238 a spec book back then like Howard the Duck a few years earlier)?

 

Great thread by the way.

 

Jay

[CDaBruce]

Spidey 250's cover is just awesome!

 

+1

 

It's great! Steal it!

[Bosco685]

I'm sure there's an ASM 238 somewhere but more than that I consider the Hobgoblin storyline to be defining turning point of Spiderman.

 

 

[Bosco685]

So my question refers to the Tattooz in issue 238.

 

The insert is clearly part of the book in that it is stapled and can't be removed. At least on all the ones I've ever owned. Does anyone have an issue where the insert is loose, and legitimately so?

 

Also, how do you get the tattooz out (and/or back in) without messing up the insert. Or for that matter the comic.

 

The CGC label says "Tattooz inside" for a Blue label and I assume that means the insert.

One Green label will say "Tattooz missing from insert. Incomplete."

I couldn't find the language for a missing insert.

 

And of course the FF 252 has the Tattooz if they need to be replaced (though not sure how one does that)

I've had a spare tattoo insert tucked away in case I ever happen across a sharp tattooless example. But I have never cut one out.

 

1) It appears to be a single tattoo. But the instructions make it sound like there are more.

 

2) You have to slice open the insert to get to the tattoo.

 

3) All of mine have the tattoo insert, and all are stapled into the book.

 

 

 

[oakman29]

One of my favorite villains.Love that Spidey run.

[retrothecollector]

Hobgoblin Marvel Universe has a sweet figure of him.

[mysterio]

I've always loved Hobgoblin and that ASM run. My avatar gives me away. That image of Hobgoblin telling you to steal the book cracks me up every time. It became my first avatar that stuck, and while I'll change every once in a while I usually come back to it.

[500Club]

Pretty much all the full hobgoblin covers are classics but for the 289. What a lost opportunity for such a headline conclusion.

There was some inter-office political intrigue that went on at the time. I can't remember the details, but James Owsley was the Spider-Man writer, and Shooter was the EIC. Somehow, when Owsley was away, it was decided that the Hobgoblin would be killed, and revealed to be Ned Leeds. This happened in Spider Man vs Wolverine. Owsley felt the rug had been pulled out from under him, and left he book. Peter David had to come in and write a clean-up story in 289.

 

To read the intended ending, get the tpb 'Hobgoblin Lives', written by Roger Stern, the original Hobgoblin saga writer.

[BradleyX2]

There was some inter-office political intrigue that went on at the time. I can't remember the details, but James Owsley was the Spider-Man writer, and Shooter was the EIC. Somehow, when Owsley was away, it was decided that the Hobgoblin would be killed, and revealed to be Ned Leeds. This happened in Spider Man vs Wolverine. Owsley felt the rug had been pulled out from under him, and left he book. Peter David had to come in and write a clean-up story in 289.

 

 

No, no. Jim Owsley (aka Christopher Priest) is the guy who *wrote* SPIDER-MAN VS. WOLVERINE, specifically with the intention of having Ned Leeds die in it.

 

 

This is Peter David from his blog explaining how the whole ASM #289 reveal came about:

 

 

THE HOBGOBLIN

 

Yes, the Hobgoblin…a villain whose identity was revealed to fans in one of the most bizarre twists that Marvel ever embarked upon. Stunned fans demanded, “Why the hell did you do it this way?” And I shall now answer that.

 

At the time, Hobgoblin had managed to move beyond simply being the Green Goblin redux, becoming one of Spidey’s more formidable villains and certainly the talk of Spidey fandom. Who is he really? was one of the most bandied about questions in the letters pages, one of the most posed queries at conventions. (What I started doing was answering it point blank. Fans would come up to me at signings and say, “Who’s the Hobgoblin?” And I’d say, “Ned Leeds” or “Flash Thompson” or “Jameson” or whoever crossed my mind at that moment. The questioner would always look surprised, and I’d say, “You asked. What’d you expect me to do?” And they’d wander off, looking shellshocked. And I’d tell the next questioner something different.)

 

But the question did have to be settled and answered eventually. And it became somewhat problematic, especially considering that Roger Stern (the character’s guiding light) was no longer involved with Spider-Man at the time that we were starting to move towards a revelation storyline.

 

At one point there was a Spider-writer’s meeting, spearheaded by editor Jim Owsley. All the Spider writers discussed the open issue of who the Hobgoblin really was. Tom DeFalco’s inclination was to go on the assumption that Hobby was Daily Bugle reporter Ned Leeds. There was always the option of going in a different direction at the last minute. But so that we were all on the same page, the consensus was that we would all operate on the basis that Ned was indeed Hobgoblin. Amazing Spider-Man, which Tom was writing at the time (I was on Spectacular Spider-Man) would be the main source for clues, hints and storylines that would eventually lead up to the revelation of the Hobgoblin’s identity…presumably Ned, unless so many readers nailed it that we felt we had to go in another direction.

 

Time passed, stories were written…

 

And then stuff happened.

 

Tom left Amazing Spider-Man under circumstances that were–how shall I put it?–less than cordial between himself and Owsley. This was unfortunate, since I thought that Tom’s work on Spider-Man was some of his best stuff.

 

At the time, guesses as to Hobby’s identity were coming in hot and heavy since Tom had stepped up the Hobgoblin storyline. And the vast majority of the guesses centered on Hobby being Ned Leeds. We weren’t fooling a lot of people; indeed, most of the people who guessed otherwise did so on the basis that it couldn’t be Ned because it couldn’t be that obvious.

 

In any event, one day Jim Owsley came by my office (I was working in the sales department at the time) and said, “You busy for lunch?”

 

“Nooo…”

 

“Good. We’re going out to discuss,” and he got a slightly demented cackle in his voice, “the Hobgoblin. You’re going to write the story that reveals his identity…”

 

“I am?”

 

“Yes. And at lunch, I’ll tell you who he is.”

 

I frowned. “He’s Ned Leeds.”

 

“At lunch,” Owsley repeated, sounding quite mysterious, and evaporated from my office door.

 

So we went out to lunch and Owsley wasted no time in getting down to business. “Okay. In Amazing Spider-Man #289, we’re going to reveal who the Hobgoblin is.”

 

“Right. Ned Leeds,” I said, in hopes that Owsley’s odd reaction to my saying it previously had been an aberration.

 

“Nope. Because I’m killing off Ned Leeds.”

 

My jaw kind of dropped. “You’re what?!”

 

“There’s going to be a Spider-Man/Wolverine one shot that I’m writing, and Spider-Man is going to find Ned dead in his hotel room.”

 

“Dead? Who killed him?”

 

“We don’t show who killed him, but it’s implied that it’s terrorists.”

 

“But…but,” I stammered, “if you’re killing off Ned…then who is the Hobgoblin?”

 

Owsley grinned. “The Foreigner.”

 

The Foreigner was a master assassin character whom I’d created to be a nemesis for Spider-Man. Bore a strong resemblance (when he was drawn correctly) to Patrick McGoohan.

 

“The Foreigner?!” I said. “The Foreigner wouldn’t be the Hobgoblin!”

 

“Sure! It’ll be great!”

 

“No, it won’t be great,” I said. “First off, the Foreigner’s whole shtick is that he’s low profile. He doesn’t run around in gaudy, conspicuous costumes. He blends in. Taking on a costumed villain identity is totally against his character. And second, we’ve been telling people that Hobgoblin is an already-established character in the Spider-Man cast. The Foreigner was created after Hobgoblin showed up. It’s a cheat. We’d be cheating the readers. You’ve got to change this idea of Ned being killed.”

 

“It’s too late. The book’s already written and drawn.”

 

I moaned.

 

“Okay,” said Owsley gamely. “If you don’t want it to be the Foreigner, then let’s figure out who it can be.”

 

We started going over recent developments in Amazing, and slowly we came to a hideous realization.

 

He had to be Ned Leeds. Tom had been extremely thorough, perhaps too much so. When one took all the clues into account, there was really no one besides Ned Leeds that it could be. No wonder practically all the readers were figuring it out. No other suspects really fit.

 

“The Hobgoblin has to be Ned Leeds,” I said.

 

“Yeah, but Ned’s going to be dead a couple of months before #289 comes out. He can’t be the Hobgoblin.”

 

I thought about that. And thought about that.

 

And I had one of those frightening skewed moments of mine. A moment when I look at a story point where something outrageous would be required to resolve it, and I think to myself, Well we couldn’t possibly conclude it that way. And then that magic two word phrase occurs to me, the phrase being…

 

“Why not?”

 

Owsley looked at me strangely. “What do you mean, why not?”

 

“Why can’t he be the Hobgoblin?”

 

“Because he’ll be dead.”

 

“Exactly!” I said with increasing excitement. “Jim, think about it. Comic readers are locked into certain patterns which we can use to our advantage. And when it comes to mystery villains, the pattern is: You present your suspects, you drop clues, you might kill off a suspect or two, you have a big confrontation with the hero and the villain, and the villain is unmasked.”

 

I could see he was still with me, if skeptical, so I pushed on. “Right now, Ned Leeds is the number one suspect. But if we violate the pattern…if we kill him off, but make it that he was the Hobgoblin…we can sucker punch all the readers. Ned Leeds will go from being the most likely suspect to the least. Fans will have the same reaction you just had: Ned’s dead, so that eliminates him as a suspect. For a period of several months between Ned’s death and issue #289, the one guy fans will be positive can’t be the Hobgoblin is Ned Leeds. We’re sacrificing the climactic showdown between Spidey and his arch foe…but what we’re gaining in exchange is something unprecedented. Something so unique, that no one would ever be able to do it again.”

 

“It’s so stupid, who’d want to?” Owsley said, but I could tell that he was really getting into the loopy novelty of it. “But then you’re saying the Hobgoblin’s dead? Gone?”

 

“We’ll have a new Hobgoblin. The guy who was responsible for his death, whoever that is. It won’t be terrorists, it’ll be…” I paused, trying to come up with something.

 

And Owz and I were on the same wavelength, because we said it at the same time: “Jack O’Lantern.”

 

It made perfect sense. Jack O’Lantern was scared of Hobby and had gotten the snot kicked out of himself the last time they’d faced off.

 

Very quickly the mysterious and unseen terrorists who had knocked off Ned Leeds metamorphosized into operatives of the Foreigner. It was consistent for Jack O’Lantern. Having gotten his head handed to him once, he decided to hire a top assassin to do his dirty work for him. And we had the simple leap of faith that the Foreigner, being as well-connected as he was, had been able to determine that Ned was the Hobgoblin. Why not? God knows enough fans with far less resources than the Foreigner had figured it out. Jack hires Foreigner, Foreigner aces Ned, Jack becomes the new Hobgoblin, and we get our shock revelation.

 

And that’s exactly what we did.

 

When the revelation issue came out, I fancied that I could hear jaws dropping throughout the country. People didn’t know what to make of it. Some felt cheated. Some loved the idea that we had totally fooled them.

 

And almost all of them said, “How the hell did you come up with this?”

 

And now you know. So if you didn’t like it, blame me. Sure, I was just dealing with the plot twists that had been thrown at me, but ultimately, the responsibility is mine.

 

But it was Owsley’s idea to kill off Jean DeWolff, and Al Milgrom and Bob Harras made the Hulk gray.

 

That’s another story, though…