Foolish Consistencies and…

April 12, 1996

And now, due to popular demand (well, a couple of people have asked) here’s an installment of a brand new features which I call:

WEIRD TWISTED REASONABLY TRUE COMIC BOOK STORIES

Yes, what WTRTCBS represents are weird stories of stuff I’ve done in comic books, “reasonably true” because they’re being reported to the best of my recollection.

And what’s the subject of this installment? Well, as it so happens I’ve gotten several inquiries recently, both postal and electronic, about my unexpected involvement with what was–at the time–one of the most successful mysteries Marvel had going. It was in the Spider-Man titles, back when the words, “Who do you think he really is?” applied to someone other than the title character.

In this instance, the question referred to a Spidey villain whose true identity had fired the imaginations of Marvel readers (this was back when Marvel fired something other than editorial personnel.) And that villain was:

THE HOBGOBLIN

Yes, the Hobgoblin…a villain whose identity was revealed to fans in one of the most bizarre twists that Marvel ever embarked upon. Stunned fans demanded, “Why the hëll did you do it this way?” And I shall now answer that.

At the time, Hobgoblin had managed to move beyond simply being the Green Goblin redux, becoming one of Spidey’s more formidable villains and certainly the talk of Spidey fandom. Who is he really? was one of the most bandied about questions in the letters pages, one of the most posed queries at conventions. (What I started doing was answering it point blank. Fans would come up to me at signings and say, “Who’s the Hobgoblin?” And I’d say, “Ned Leeds” or “Flash Thompson” or “Jameson” or whoever crossed my mind at that moment. The questioner would always look surprised, and I’d say, “You asked. What’d you expect me to do?” And they’d wander off, looking shellshocked. And I’d tell the next questioner something different.)

But the question did have to be settled and answered eventually. And it became somewhat problematic, especially considering that Roger Stern (the character’s guiding light) was no longer involved with Spider-Man at the time that we were starting to move towards a revelation storyline.

At one point there was a Spider-writer’s meeting, spearheaded by editor Jim Owsley. All the Spider writers discussed the open issue of who the Hobgoblin really was. Tom DeFalco’s inclination was to go on the assumption that Hobby was Daily Bugle reporter Ned Leeds. There was always the option of going in a different direction at the last minute. But so that we were all on the same page, the consensus was that we would all operate on the basis that Ned was indeed Hobgoblin. Amazing Spider-Man, which Tom was writing at the time (I was on Spectacular Spider-Man) would be the main source for clues, hints and storylines that would eventually lead up to the revelation of the Hobgoblin’s identity…presumably Ned, unless so many readers nailed it that we felt we had to go in another direction.

Time passed, stories were written…

And then stuff happened.

Tom left Amazing Spider-Man under circumstances that were–how shall I put it?–less than cordial between himself and Owsley. This was unfortunate, since I thought that Tom’s work on Spider-Man was some of his best stuff.

At the time, guesses as to Hobby’s identity were coming in hot and heavy since Tom had stepped up the Hobgoblin storyline. And the vast majority of the guesses centered on Hobby being Ned Leeds. We weren’t fooling a lot of people; indeed, most of the people who guessed otherwise did so on the basis that it couldn’t be Ned because it couldn’t be that obvious.

In any event, one day Jim Owsley came by my office (I was working in the sales department at the time) and said, “You busy for lunch?”

“Nooo…”

“Good. We’re going out to discuss,” and he got a slightly demented cackle in his voice, “the Hobgoblin. You’re going to write the story that reveals his identity…”

“I am?”

“Yes. And at lunch, I’ll tell you who he is.”

I frowned. “He’s Ned Leeds.”

“At lunch,” Owsley repeated, sounding quite mysterious, and evaporated from my office door.

So we went out to lunch and Owsley wasted no time in getting down to business. “Okay. In Amazing Spider-Man #289, we’re going to reveal who the Hobgoblin is.”

“Right. Ned Leeds,” I said, in hopes that Owsley’s odd reaction to my saying it previously had been an aberration.

“Nope. Because I’m killing off Ned Leeds.”

My jaw kind of dropped. “You’re what?!”

“There’s going to be a Spider-Man/Wolverine one shot that I’m writing, and Spider-Man is going to find Ned dead in his hotel room.”

“Dead? Who killed him?”

“We don’t show who killed him, but it’s implied that it’s terrorists.”

“But…but,” I stammered, “if you’re killing off Ned…then who is the Hobgoblin?”

Owsley grinned. “The Foreigner.”

The Foreigner was a master assassin character whom I’d created to be a nemesis for Spider-Man. Bore a strong resemblance (when he was drawn correctly) to Patrick McGoohan.

“The Foreigner?!” I said. “The Foreigner wouldn’t be the Hobgoblin!”

“Sure! It’ll be great!”

“No, it won’t be great,” I said. “First off, the Foreigner’s whole shtick is that he’s low profile. He doesn’t run around in gaudy, conspicuous costumes. He blends in. Taking on a costumed villain identity is totally against his character. And second, we’ve been telling people that Hobgoblin is an already-established character in the Spider-Man cast. The Foreigner was created after Hobgoblin showed up. It’s a cheat. We’d be cheating the readers. You’ve got to change this idea of Ned being killed.”

“It’s too late. The book’s already written and drawn.”

I moaned.

“Okay,” said Owsley gamely. “If you don’t want it to be the Foreigner, then let’s figure out who it can be.”

We started going over recent developments in Amazing, and slowly we came to a hideous realization.

He had to be Ned Leeds. Tom had been extremely thorough, perhaps too much so. When one took all the clues into account, there was really no one besides Ned Leeds that it could be. No wonder practically all the readers were figuring it out. No other suspects really fit.

“The Hobgoblin has to be Ned Leeds,” I said.

“Yeah, but Ned’s going to be dead a couple of months before #289 comes out. He can’t be the Hobgoblin.”

I thought about that. And thought about that.

And I had one of those frightening skewed moments of mine. A moment when I look at a story point where something outrageous would be required to resolve it, and I think to myself, Well we couldn’t possibly conclude it that way. And then that magic two word phrase occurs to me, the phrase being…

“Why not?”

Owsley looked at me strangely. “What do you mean, why not?”

“Why can’t he be the Hobgoblin?”

“Because he’ll be dead.”

“Exactly!” I said with increasing excitement. “Jim, think about it. Comic readers are locked into certain patterns which we can use to our advantage. And when it comes to mystery villains, the pattern is: You present your suspects, you drop clues, you might kill off a suspect or two, you have a big confrontation with the hero and the villain, and the villain is unmasked.”

I could see he was still with me, if skeptical, so I pushed on. “Right now, Ned Leeds is the number one suspect. But if we violate the pattern…if we kill him off, but make it that he was the Hobgoblin…we can sucker punch all the readers. Ned Leeds will go from being the most likely suspect to the least. Fans will have the same reaction you just had: Ned’s dead, so that eliminates him as a suspect. For a period of several months between Ned’s death and issue #289, the one guy fans will be positive can’t be the Hobgoblin is Ned Leeds. We’re sacrificing the climactic showdown between Spidey and his arch foe…but what we’re gaining in exchange is something unprecedented. Something so unique, that no one would ever be able to do it again.”

“It’s so stupid, who’d want to?” Owsley said, but I could tell that he was really getting into the loopy novelty of it. “But then you’re saying the Hobgoblin’s dead? Gone?”

“We’ll have a new Hobgoblin. The guy who was responsible for his death, whoever that is. It won’t be terrorists, it’ll be…” I paused, trying to come up with something.

And Owz and I were on the same wavelength, because we said it at the same time: “Jack O’Lantern.”

It made perfect sense. Jack O’Lantern was scared of Hobby and had gotten the snot kicked out of himself the last time they’d faced off.

Very quickly the mysterious and unseen terrorists who had knocked off Ned Leeds metamorphosized into operatives of the Foreigner. It was consistent for Jack O’Lantern. Having gotten his head handed to him once, he decided to hire a top assassin to do his dirty work for him. And we had the simple leap of faith that the Foreigner, being as well-connected as he was, had been able to determine that Ned was the Hobgoblin. Why not? God knows enough fans with far less resources than the Foreigner had figured it out. Jack hires Foreigner, Foreigner aces Ned, Jack becomes the new Hobgoblin, and we get our shock revelation.

And that’s exactly what we did.

When the revelation issue came out, I fancied that I could hear jaws dropping throughout the country. People didn’t know what to make of it. Some felt cheated. Some loved the idea that we had totally fooled them.

And almost all of them said, “How the hëll did you come up with this?”

And now you know. So if you didn’t like it, blame me. Sure, I was just dealing with the plot twists that had been thrown at me, but ultimately, the responsibility is mine.

But it was Owsley’s idea to kill off Jean DeWolff, and Al Milgrom and Bob Harras made the Hulk gray.

That’s another story, though…

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at To Be Continued, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)