Quote Originally Posted by Chubistian View Post
I just bought this volume which has ASM 224 to 251 and Annuals 16 & 17, so I’m finally going to experience the original Hobgoblin (and Stern’s run). As a kid, I didn’t know there were different Hobgoblins, and later on I discovered I had been exposed to Macendale more than to Kingsley. I’m pretty hyped for this reading. I’m also buying some Slott’s issues from time to time, and I like what I see about Roderick, though using others to impersonate him is becoming a cliche to make fun of
Jason Macendale in fact has been continuously the Hobgoblin for a longer period of time than Kingsley and it was Macendale's Hobgoblin that showed up in the Fox Cartoon.

Incidentally Jason Macendale's first artist was none other than...Steve Ditko. When he first appeared in Machine Man, it was Ditko who drew him and co-created him but he wasn't Hobgoblin then. They made him Hobgoblin in #289 after they ended the original mystery by saying it was Ned Leeds and Macendale became Hobgoblin's legacy character, basically a way to keep the identity by jettisoning the mystery.

So in a larger sense, Macendale's lineage as the Hobgoblin is truer than Kingsley. He was the first Hobgoblin who was adapted to another medium, he was co-created by Ditko, he appeared as the Hobgoblin continuously for ten years. Whereas Roderick Kingsley was this mystery character that most fans didn't care about until Roger Stern's Hobgoblin Lives and when Kingsley came back in the same year that Norman was resurrected, and then you had Goblins at the Gate which established Norman as the Alpha Goblin, so Kingsley returned as Kingsley and became a minor and underused part of Spider-Man's rogues.