Hobgoblin (Roderick Kingsley) Appreciation (2019)

[Revolutionary_Jack]

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.

[Mistah K88]

That actually is one of my problems with Roderick Kingsley. He's a businessman and fashion designer. That kind of does explain why he'd be drawn to that swish looking cape and the Renfaire look of the Hobgoblin. It also explains him designing villain outfits and motifs. What that doesn't explain is how this guy would know about chemistry and stuff to improve on Norman's formula? Where does the latter come from?

Well, the one time Kingsley did make it into animation they made sure to change his profession (being a perfume mogul rather than fashion icon). Maybe that was their way to explain that SPECIFIC detail that never made sense. Granted the creators of the show said that it was to call back to Kingsley’s first story, not Hobgoblin’s... That said, anyone think Belladonna cracked a bottle of champagne when Kingsley was outed as Hobgoblin and went to jail?

[MajorHoy]

from The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Master Edition Vol. 1 No. 6 (May 1991), when Hobgoblin's identity as Roderick Kingsley still wasn't revealed: