Hobgoblin, wasted potential?

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Yeah, that's supposed to be what distinguishes him from Norman.

He's not nuts and he knows when to cut out instead of wasting his time fighting Spider-Man.

I don't think writers could have used him as they have in the past few years if he was really all that crazy.

Bear in mind that we mean "Crazy" in the comics sense of the term and we always need to be careful when applying and bandying that. To me I never got the sense that Roderick Kingsley's actions would be different if he was written as a madman since Norman in the Lee Ditko era and after resurrection behaved much the same way as he did. Roderick Kingsley's best stories still involve him fighting Spider-Man heck he got the serum so that he could get super strength. There's no point to that if he can't fight Spider-Man or doesn't engage in combat, and besides Kingpin already has the role of the powerful guy behind a desk thing.

If Kingsley's so smart and he's rich then why is he is a supervillain? Remember that comic book "insanity" (no relation to actual insanity or realistic representations of mental illness) was invented and became a thing precisely to update the supervillain gimmicks once audiences became more sophisticated and started asking for better motivated characters.

And besides he says stuff, in Hobgoblin Lives, that he does this for the thrill. Those aren't rational motivations.

Norman for all his "craziness" is the richer, more powerful and the bigger villain, so either insanity isn't a detriment or a weakness for Norman, or that Kingsley is too full of himself. My pick is the latter.

And again how does a fashion designer become enough of a chemist to improve Norman's formula? That always struck me as bizarre because it dilutes the unique nature of Norman's work and motif if any rando can DIY it, or any anonymous chemist can be hired to do it. What next Kingsley will recreate Dr. Erskine's super serum? And before anyone goes "If Celestial then..." about the MU, to me poor design is poor design. I feel the same way about Miles Warren and the Jackal somehow achieving human cloning on a ESU salary and using it to fulfill his perversions, but at least Jackal was a one-and-done villain who was intended as a joke and who Gerry Conway buried even more with the throw that he never cloned anybody.