Who is the most powerful Marvel villain?

The Green Goblin was introduced in The Amazing Spider-Man no. 14, then his identity was kept a secret for 25 issues until the final panel of The Amazing Spider-Man 39, when he revealed himself as Norman Osborn.

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The truth about the Hobgoblin's identity would not be so simple. Accepted Marvel Comics canon says that the one-time Hobgoblin is Roderick Kingsley, but it was a long, bumpy, 14-year journey to get there, as Glenn Greenberg recounted at “Back issue!” magazine. In “When the Hobbit Met Spidey,” Greenberg interviews various Spider-Man writers/editors from the 1980s to decipher how the Hobgoblin's origins became such a tangled web.

Let's set the scene: it's 1983, and Roger Stern is writing The Amazing Spider-Man. He notices that readers writing in the letters page want the Green Goblin back, which inspires him to create a successor to the villain: the Hobgoblin, designed by John Romita Jr. To capture the old Lee/Ditko magic, Hobgoblin's true identity also to be a secret. (Tom DeFalco, who was Spider-Man's editor when Stern wrote, told Back Issue! that the mystery was his idea.)

Almost from the beginning, Stern intended the Hobgoblin to be Roderick Kingsley; Stern had introduced Kingsley in an earlier story. According to his notes in “Back Issue!”, Stern drawn “Amazing Spider-Man” #238, not knowing who the Hobgoblin was, but when he started writing the villain's dialogue, he knew it had to be Kingsley. He set up a red herring in Amazing Spider-Man #249 when the Hobgoblin tries to blackmail New York's elite and Kingsley is one of the victims. Stern had it Daniel Kingsley, Roderick's insane younger brother, whom he used as a body double.

Per DeFalco recalls that Stern kept the truth so close to his chest that he didn't even tell him, to his editor: “I said to Roger, ' I'll make a list of suspects and cross the guys off. when their time comes, and when it's time to reveal, you'll tell me what you think it is, and if I agree, it will be, and if I don't, I'll be the editor!”

Stern intended the Hobgoblin mystery to span one issue longer than the Green Goblin (meaning it would be covered in “Amazing Spider-Man” #264 or something). Unfortunately, Stern left The Amazing Spider-Man due to a personality clash with new editor Danny Fingerot. Stern's final issue of The Amazing Spider-Man no. 251 teases on its cover that the Hobgoblin's identity will be revealed, but the issue itself is not resolved.

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After Stern's departure, DeFalco moved from editor to writer for The Amazing Spider-Man. He finally learned the truth about the Hobgoblin from the outgoing Stern, but the problem was DeFalco wasn't convinced. In particular, he thought the proposed twin trick with the Kingsley brothers would be cheap storytelling. So he went back to his list of suspects and concluded that the Hobgoblin should be someone else: Richard Fisk, son of the Kingpin. As a mob prince, Fisk Jr. would naturally have connections to the underworld and ambitions to become a Hobgoblin.

So DeFalco planned to reveal Richard Fisk as the Hobgoblin and Roderick Kingsley as Hobie's partner in crime, Rose. Even Stern agreed that would have been a “good” response. But that didn't happen; after all exactly inverted from DeFalco's resolution. Richard Fisk was Rose, and Kingsley was eventually unmasked as the Hobgoblin much later.

In the meantime, however, the Hobgoblin was pinned on Ned Leeds. Marvel movie fans might think, wait Spidey's wacky best friend Ned (played by Jacob Batalon) from the Homecoming trilogy? Well, not exactly. See, the Marvel Cinematic Universe version of Ned Leeds is more of an adaptation Ganke LeeAsian-American best friend of Miles Morales. Comic Ned Leeds was a grown-up reporter for the Daily Bugle and the future husband of Betty Brent. (His name, “Leeds”, even feels like a journalistic pun.) Ned was one of the earliest Spider-Man supporting characters, making his debut in The Amazing Spider-Man no. 18, and was mostly friendly with Peter. So why make him a Hobgoblin?