The Hobgoblin arc is generally considered one of the biggest messes in Spidey's history, up there with the Clone Saga and OMD. A four year mystery with multiple creators at the helm, all with their own ideas of who the Hobgoblin should be. The resolution to this saga was not just underwhelming, to many readers it was insulting, and the troubles would not be resolved until the Hobgoblin Lives story. Roger Stern wanted him to be Kingsley, DeFalco wanted him to be Robert Fisk, Priest wanted him to be Lance Bannon. Logically Stern should have been the one to finish it; he told DeFalco who he wanted the Hobgoblin to be but DeFalco didn't like the idea and so he started setting up his own candidate, and used Ned Leeds as a red herring. When Priest came onto the books he revealed that Robert Fisk was actually the Rose. Supposedly to spite Priest, DeFalco told comics reporters that Ned Leeds was the Hobgoblin, and in retaliation Priest controversially killed Leeds off in a (then) completely unrelated story. At some point during this period Priest fired DeFalco and in his attempts to bring a darker tone to the Spidey books was fired himself. Peter David was brought on to wrap up the Hobgoblin mystery quickly so they could completely clean the decks across the Spider titles. And with all these candidates, who does Peter David choose? The guy who was already dead.
Calling it a letdown is an understatement. The death of Ned Leeds was controversial in and of itself, but retroactively making him the Hobgoblin (requiring Peter David to almost completely retcon what Spider-Man vs Wolverine was even about) to this day never made sense to me. Why did he make that choice?
I enjoy the Hobgoblin story at least up to Gang War but it is no question that it could have been wrapped up a lot sooner than it was, especially if the plan all along was for Leeds to be the Hobgoblin which we all know it wasn't.
Of course all this is retconned ten years later in Hobgoblin Lives where it was actually Kingsley all along (as it should have been) but it didn't undo the damage done.
It is also interesting how the main reason this story arc fell apart was behind-the-scenes drama and creators looking to one up or spite each other, where in the end the ones who suffered the most were the characters and the readers.
If you were EIC or editor of the Spider titles how would you have told the Hobgoblin mystery and resolved it so a story like Hobgoblin Lives wouldn't have been necessary?