The Top Ten Most Important Spider-Man Stories of the 1980s

[Revolutionary_Jack]

If Hobgoblin wasn't as "important" as you say, why did constant writers felt the need to revisit him well into the 90's?

Importance does not equal quality. The quality and value of the Hobgoblin stories is independent of the very little influence he ultimately had. People who write monthly comics and ongoing are often not the very best judges on to which elements are ultimately going to prove important and lasting. Readers and writers might well have thought that Hobgoblin was the big new thing at the time but that it did not prove to be is no fault of their own. To take an example from the movies. I personally do think The Dark Knight is a better movie than Iron Man 1. Both movies came out in the same year or in a year's difference between each. But ultimately The Dark Knight had far less of an impact and influence than Iron Man did.

He was the first successful addition to Spider-man's rogue gallery in years.

Venom and Carnage were the biggest additions since Lee-Ditko. Achievement and impact is greater there.

They could have easily capped him off with the Ned Leeds reveal and that would have been it. But they immediately replaced him with Macendale and then Phil Urich. So the identity certainly has legs.

Ulrich later became Goblin Knight, and IIRC, he's currently dead, but neither he nor Macendale were ever big villains on the scale of the original Hobgoblin and overall the stories of the Hobgoblin declined in quality once Stern stepped down. When people talk about the great Hobgoblin stories they are mainly thinking of the original arc in the Stern run and nothing else. Even Stern's Hobgoblin Lives isn't considered as great a story as his original arc. It's a big salvage operation.

I will agree that Norman's return made all goblins irrelevant once he was back. But nobody anticipated him coming back when Stern created him.

Which again shows how intangible the idea of importance ends up being. For readers of a certain age and bracket, the Hobgoblin feels like he should be important. But if you step out and look at the big picture, he's not.

Let's say there's a One More Pumpkin Bomb story which erases all Goblins except Norman from continuity. More or less the long term serial arc and stories of practically all the characters except Harry Osborn, would be the same. There would be little long-term difference if Roderick Kingsley was erased from continuity or not. Because he didn't make any real impact on Peter and his major supporting cast. There's Ned and Betty but he could have simply died at the hands of the Rose or in Berlin or whatever. It wouldn't change anything.

The presence of the Hobgoblin doesn't take away from Norman. If anything, it adds to his legacy. Because, even though he had been dead for years, his shadow still loomed over Peter's life. In many ways, you could argue that Norman is indirectly responsible for the Hobgoblin's actions as it was his gear and journals that Kingsley used. Without them, there would have been no Hobgoblin.

That was already done by Conway when Harry Osborn became Green Goblin and Peter became alienated and certainly estranged from his closest friend. So the shadow and legacy of Osborn was already big and great without Hobgoblin in the picture. And Harry Osborn unlike Roderick Kingsley was directly tied to Peter and Gwen.

What makes Kingsley interesting also weakens him as a successor to Osbor, is that he has no connection whatsoever with Peter Parker. I mean the killing of Ned Leeds isn't because of Peter's actions or choices or being connected to him. Him attacking Ned has nothing to do with Peter, since Ned was a Bugle reporter who got taken out in the line of duty. It's more or less like how Frederick Foswell got taken down by the Kingpin's goons in Lee-Romita's run.

The main value of Stern's original Hobgoblin saga is the extensive world-building that Stern did. He really did set up and show how smart and dangerous and resourceful Norman was. Basically an evil Bruce Wayne with multiple Goblin-caves across the city, with his own mobile (which strangely resembles the Ghostbusters car) and so on. Telling the story from the perspective of the villainous Hobgoblin who monologues extensively in thought balloons and word balloons is also interesting and in that regard it's a true ancestor to Kindred since that's how Spencer's Kindred talks and moves in his run. So on a lore and craft level, Stern's Hobgoblin saga did have an impact, but in terms of actual continuity, actual influence in terms of adaptations and crossovers, Hobgoblin is not a very important character.

[Mister Mets]

No one's saying Hobgoblin is bigger than Venom (the comparison to Carnage is inapplicable because the first appearances are ranked separately.)

By dominating the 80s, Hobgoblin did have an impact on the comics. Without the Hobgoblin, either there would be no ongoing story dominating subplots and keeping more readers interested in the book, or some other ongoing story would have taken over with the potential to be as significant to the larger series, for good or ill.

[Scott Taylor]

Bit like trying to assess the importance of the marriage, assessing the hobgoblin or a lot of the 1980s storylines. Things are so different now that practically none of it is relevant to today. The last Hobgoblin story we got was a big dud (imho).

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Bit like trying to assess the importance of the marriage, assessing the hobgoblin or a lot of the 1980s storylines. Things are so different now that practically none of it is relevant to today. The last Hobgoblin story we got was a big dud (imho).

The marriage will always be important regardless of OMD. It lasted for 20 years and sustained itself, and played a key part in several major stories in that period.

Most importantly the period of the marriage happened to be the highest selling period in Spider-Man's comics history. The best selling Spider-Man comic, Torment featured a married Spider-Man and the sales of that period, starting from The Wedding Annual through KLH through Venom, through McFarlane's early years, through Maximum Carnage, and later the early Clone Saga is extremely high selling. The marriage is also part of a number of other classic stories in the 2000s -- JMS' entire run, including Coming Home, The Conversation, Doomed Affairs, Book of Ezekiel, Back in Black, Marvel Knights Spider-Man, Jenkins' run, To Have and to Hold, Web of Romance among others.

Vastly more eyeballs numerically speaking have read the married Spider-Man than have read Post-OMD, and thanks to Marvel Unlimited and so on, more people will re-read those stories than Post-OMD as time passes. The marriage is also one of the biggest events of that period, covered in media and so on. It also inspired stuff like Spider-Girl, an AU which features the first Marvel female character to reach 100 issues in an ongoing. Mayday is still the longest-running Marvel female character to head her title. Maybe that will be surpassed, but she will always be first.

Spider-Man's marriage to Mary Jane from a publication standpoint is far more important than say Reed and Sue's. If Reed and Sue weren't married we might not have Franklin and Valeria but having Franklin and Valeria, the two of them haven't sold as many comics as Mayday have by comparison nor do they have the same importance.

Likewise, Peter and Mary Jane got married in 1987, on the 25th Anniversary since his first appearance in AF#15 in 1962. So in terms of milestone it has something bigger than the Hobgoblin mystery.

The Hobgoblin for instance sold well certainly in his time, but it wasn't as impactful in his time. I mean here's this letter column for ASM#247 in the tail end of Stern's run, where then editor Tom Defalco admits that more people have written about and asked about MJ's return to ASM than about the Hobgoblin mystery.

ASM # 247 Letters' Pages - MJ popularity.jpg

[Lee]

Most "Best Stories" lists end up full of (often mediocre) important/impactful stories, rather than assessing each candidate on its own merits.

With this list of "Most Important" stories, I think there's a little bit of the opposite. The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man and Nothing Can Stop The Juggernaut were both great, fondly remembered stories, that had no significant impact on the series as a whole.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man and Nothing Can Stop The Juggernaut were both great, fondly remembered stories, that had no significant impact on the series as a whole.

Nothing Can Stop the Juggernaut was a story that was important in fortifying and re-emphasizing Spider-Man's status as
A) A Really Powerful Superhero, which had taken a drubbing thanks to Wolfman's tenure (though Conway and Wein weren't blameless).
B) Marvel's great underdog.
In that story, Spider-Man took on a villain outside his weight class and someone who was often a villain that posed as a threat to a full team of the X-Men.

It was also Spider-Man's first major battle with a villain from the wider Marvel-Universe. So it was a hugely important story in raising the scope and potential of Spider-Man's story and franchise. Without Juggernaut, you would not have him battling Firelord, nor could stuff like him beating the X-Men in Secret Wars 1984 happened (which Shooter could justify in the logic that "Spider-Man beat Juggernaut who beat the X-Men by himself, therefore Spider-Man can defeat the X-Men") as well as including elements like Venom and other out-there elements in Spider-Man's grounded corner.

While The Kid Who Collected Spider-Man gave Spider-Man importance in terms of literary value and emotional richness. It was a story that really got into the interior life and compassion of a superhero as well as use real-world elements to cast light into a superhero's world and career. It also changed the kind of stories that Spider-Man could tackle and it was definitely a story that raised the maturity of Spider-Man as a character, comics-title, and serial story. It showed that Spider-Man can tackle "human interest" stories and endure. Something like Kraven's Last Hunt which is a dark story with serial murder, and suicide isn't directly tied to "Kid Who Collected" but it's definitely a story made possible by the latter. I mean KLH is often considered the first Spider-Man story for adults, but in some senses Kid Who Collected was the previous one. Likewise, The Death of Jean DeWolff.

Importance can be on a variety of levels. There's sales, lasting influence, long-term direction of continuity, but also in terms of introducing new story elements, expanding the genre, overall publication history and so on.

Not every story that's "important" is great. Not every story that's great is important. The Hobgoblin Saga by and large isn't important on any parameter. Not exceptional in sales, marginal long-term influence and impact, didn't really introduce new story elements (a mystery story around a villain's identity was done first and best in Lee/Ditko with Norman Goblin), didn't expand the scope, leave the genre and so on.

[Mister Mets]

If Hobgoblin wasn't as "important" as you say, why did constant writers felt the need to revisit him well into the 90's? He was the first successful addition to Spider-man's rogue gallery in years. They could have easily capped him off with the Ned Leeds reveal and that would have been it. But they immediately replaced him with Macendale and then Phil Urich. So the identity certainly has legs.

I will agree that Norman's return made all goblins irrelevant once he was back. But nobody anticipated him coming back when Stern created him. It was respectful of Stern because he resisted creating yet another Green Goblin and, according to him, he wasn't about to revive Norman as he felt it would cheapen The Night Gwen Stacy Died.

The presence of the Hobgoblin doesn't take away from Norman. If anything, it adds to his legacy. Because, even though he had been dead for years, his shadow still loomed over Peter's life. In many ways, you could argue that Norman is indirectly responsible for the Hobgoblin's actions as it was his gear and journals that Kingsley used. Without them, there would have been no Hobgoblin.

To be fair, writers often used Hobgoblin because the Osborns were unavailable. Even Dan Slott's Phil Urich comics came at a time when Norman Osborn was reserbed for other books.

[David Walton]

The wedding had the greatest cultural impact, solidifying MJ as 'the one' so thoroughly that Marvel couldn't shake it even when they tried. Peter and MJ are as much an inevitability in the public mind as Superman and Lois Lane.

Agreed with Jack that "The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man" and KLH have the greatest literary significance, raising the bar on the kind of stories that could be told. Paul Jenkins followed in those footsteps and revived interest in the books after the Byrne/Mackie relaunch fell flat.

The Hobgoblin era is important even if the character never fully recovered after the lackluster post-death identity reveal. He kept Norman Osborn's legacy at the forefront for a new generation of readers.

[Mister Mets]

The wedding had the greatest cultural impact, solidifying MJ as 'the one' so thoroughly that Marvel couldn't shake it even when they tried. Peter and MJ are as much an inevitability in the public mind as Superman and Lois Lane.

Agreed with Jack that "The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man" and KLH have the greatest literary significance, raising the bar on the kind of stories that could be told. Paul Jenkins followed in those footsteps and revived interest in the books after the Byrne/Mackie relaunch fell flat.

The Hobgoblin era is important even if the character never fully recovered after the lackluster post-death identity reveal. He kept Norman Osborn's legacy at the forefront for a new generation of readers.

Would you rate the wedding above the alien costume and Venom (with the additional nuance that the alien costume saga featured the reveal that MJ knew that Peter was Spider-Man)?

[David Walton]

Would you rate the wedding above the alien costume and Venom (with the additional nuance that the alien costume saga featured the reveal that MJ knew that Peter was Spider-Man)?

Yes. If the wedding hadn't occurred, then MJ would have continued as one of many rotating love interests. It's hard to understate the significance of the life the Peter/MJ pairing took on post-wedding.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Yes. If the wedding hadn't occurred, then MJ would have continued as one of many rotating love interests. It's hard to understate the significance of the life the Peter/MJ pairing took on post-wedding.

Not to mention that the impact of Venom depends on the marriage. Venom’s iconic first appearance is him threatening MJ at her and Peter’s home. That scene doesn’t work with just any love interest and it’s not the same without the marriage.

[Mister Mets]

Yes. If the wedding hadn't occurred, then MJ would have continued as one of many rotating love interests. It's hard to understate the significance of the life the Peter/MJ pairing took on post-wedding.

That's a fair argument.

Do you think that without the marriage, MJ wouldn't be seen as that much more important than Betty, or Felicia, with Gwen in a different class due to how that ended?

Not to mention that the impact of Venom depends on the marriage. Venom’s iconic first appearance is him threatening MJ at her and Peter’s home. That scene doesn’t work with just any love interest and it’s not the same without the marriage.

Why?

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Why?

IT's the emotional center that gives Venom's entry its major impact, as is apparent with the conclusion of the story where Peter renounces the black suit for good.

There was a lot of ideas and inspiration for Venom. The editors wanted something big for #300, Michelinie had a story with the Symbiote which he had set up in Web of Spider-Man that he wanted a pay-off for, and Todd MacFarlane wanted to ditch the black costume and bring back the red-and-blues.

The story David Michelinie told grounded all that in emotion and character. Peter and Mary Jane were married and living and settled together when a monster invades their home and attacks them where they lived. This monster was dressed in a costume similar to what Peter was wearing. So when Peter arrives dressed in that, MJ initially reacts to shock. And then when Spider-Man chases and confronts Venom for the first time, Mary Jane insists she ditch the black costume for good and wear the red-and-blues for good.

So she's the emotional center of that story, as in the case of KLH. The fact that there's someone living with Spider-Man, made a commitment with, and reacts to the choices and consequences of his superhero career drove that story. If there was no one for Peter to go to, the horror of Venom having the same costume as Spider-Man doesn't work, if it was Felicia who inspired Peter to put on the costume to start with then it wouldn't have the same impact and meaning.

Emotionally, MJ Parker, conveys the following stuff in a flash.
-- Venom knows Peter is Spider-Man and where he lives.
-- Venom derives from the costume that Spider-Man wore and is a double.
-- Venom represents the darker side of Spider-Man which Peter must reject.

[David Walton]

That's a fair argument.

Do you think that without the marriage, MJ wouldn't be seen as that much more important than Betty, or Felicia, with Gwen in a different class due to how that ended?

I think without the marriage, Peter and MJ's relationship status would have alternated between Conway and Stern's schools of thought, with no clear winner. Conway saw them as compatible long-term romantic partners whereas Stern believed they were close personal friends unequipped to deal with the emotional baggage of a serious relationship.

The marriage gave their long-term compatibility a safety net because it wouldn't vary based on a creative team's personal preference, and it even won over skeptics like DeFalco (who ironically wrote more marriage stories than any other writer when you take into account his work on Spider-Girl.) So there's this long uninterrupted stretch that cemented MJ's status as 'the one' in a way that Marvel could never shake no matter how hard they tried.

All this said, Mary Jane is one of those rare characters who takes a life of their own. I can't imagine a scenario where the wedding didn't happen, because I'm inclined to think she wrote herself into the marriage and credited Shooter.

[David Walton]

IT's the emotional center that gives Venom's entry its major impact, as is apparent with the conclusion of the story where Peter renounces the black suit for good.

There was a lot of ideas and inspiration for Venom. The editors wanted something big for #300, Michelinie had a story with the Symbiote which he had set up in Web of Spider-Man that he wanted a pay-off for, and Todd MacFarlane wanted to ditch the black costume and bring back the red-and-blues.

The story David Michelinie told grounded all that in emotion and character. Peter and Mary Jane were married and living and settled together when a monster invades their home and attacks them where they lived. This monster was dressed in a costume similar to what Peter was wearing. So when Peter arrives dressed in that, MJ initially reacts to shock. And then when Spider-Man chases and confronts Venom for the first time, Mary Jane insists she ditch the black costume for good and wear the red-and-blues for good.

So she's the emotional center of that story, as in the case of KLH. The fact that there's someone living with Spider-Man, made a commitment with, and reacts to the choices and consequences of his superhero career drove that story. If there was no one for Peter to go to, the horror of Venom having the same costume as Spider-Man doesn't work, if it was Felicia who inspired Peter to put on the costume to start with then it wouldn't have the same impact and meaning.

Emotionally, MJ Parker, conveys the following stuff in a flash.
-- Venom knows Peter is Spider-Man and where he lives.
-- Venom derives from the costume that Spider-Man wore and is a double.
-- Venom represents the darker side of Spider-Man which Peter must reject.

100% agreed. Also of note, JMD said the marriage was KLH's 'emotional fuel.'