Originally Posted by
Lukmendes
I mean, a big problem with the Hobgoblin mystery is how constantly he showed up and they kept this "Who the hell is he?" thing for too long, and I can only imagine how annoying that must've been as far as publication went back then too, since ASM was monthly, that made the mystery last for like, 4 years, maybe 5?
Norman being Green Goblin was a lame mystery for me too, though not for the same reasons as Hobgoblin, 'cause Norman was barely a character who you had no reason to care about until he gets an actual personality in ASM#37 and then #38, any time he shows up before this are either cameos and/or a random line (Which were very scarce to begin with), so it was too little, too late by the point it's revealed in #40, though it's possible that after this Ditko would drag it a bit longer, then reveal Norman is Green Goblin, but if that happened, then it could possibly have taken too long too, but the hypothesis doesn't matter, what we got was Norman only getting any focus 3 issues before the reveal, that was lame.
So yeah, at least for me, unlike either Goblin, Kindred's mystery has the potential to not suck, his passiveness helped with that, but it can get in the way too... But a huge problem to keep in mind is that, similar to Hobgoblin Lives, whoever it turns out to be could get in the way of new readers understanding what's going on, if it's Harry there's at least the AC tie-ins to point in his direction, but new readers won't know who he is as a character since Harry didn't show up in Spencer's ASM outside of flashbacks, if it's Gwen, so far the only focus she got was talking with Peter a few times in the AC flashbacks, though her mini could help out with that, and most of the other popular suspects aren't in ASM at all... It's a complicated situation, if Kindred is revealed to be a character who only matters to fans who know more of Spidey stuff, then sucks for new readers to understand the impact of the reveal, and it's too bad if that happens, hopefully if that ends up being the case, Kindred still remains interesting even if the reveal has no impact for new readers.