Originally Posted by
Revolutionary_Jack
A flashback to Harry from ASM#121 is not the same as BND-Harry.
When you set up a mystery in an ongoing and build it up over 50 issues for a reveal, that reveal has to be marketable so as to increase and provide value to every story that built up to it and pay the investment that Marvel put on writers. This has to be the point that brings in new readers, or fence-sitters (the kind who may have read a few issues here and there, who were waiting to see what this Kindred thing led up to and so on).
So marketing is a very big thing.
A storyteller who exists in a modern internet landscape of ongoing comics where ultimately you do have to deliver some "watercooler moments" or a trend on twitter. And for better and worse, "HydraCap" is proof that Spencer can deliver the goods. He created a hook that proliferated among people who never read the comic and never did, and ultimately led to an easter egg gag in Avengers Endgame.
The Kindred reveal has to be a comparable moment of impact. And only one character can deliver the goods. A character who even if some people guess, would still be a great shock when they lower the boom.
Ned's treatment in the Hobgoblin saga was already fixed by Roger Stern in Hobgoblin Lives, who made him out to be an innocent tortured and brainwashed by Kingsley, and had him exonerated publicly. By making original Ned Leeds into a vengeful obsessive jerk, Spencer is demonizing Ned worse than Owsley (who ordered him to be made Hobgoblin) ever did.