The 20 greatest (and 10 worst) Spider-Man villains of all time
By Mike McNulty
6th Best Villain: Roderick Kingsley/The Hobgoblin
One of the most common tropes in superhero comics is the “legacy character,” a person who adopts the persona of an established hero or villain as their own. What makes the Hobgoblin such a great antagonist for Spider-Man is that he successfully upended the legacy character tropes on their heads.
Created by Roger Stern, the concept behind the Hobgoblin is that although he uses the Green Goblin’s equipment, he never aspires towards being a Green Goblin copycat. If anything, fashion designer mogul Roderick Kingsley prides himself on not being anything like Norman Osborn. Not only is he sane (at least by the standards of comic book super villains), he considers Spider-Man an inconvenient nuisance. In fact, the Hobgoblin only took the Goblin Formula after using a petty crook as a guinea pig beforehand.
He was also a mystery villain whose true identity was a genuine mystery. To often throw Spider-Man off the scent, Kingsley used others as dupes and framed them as the Hobgoblin. This meant readers would’ve seen the real Hobgoblin and the phony Hobgoblin within the same scene (which they, in fact, did since Kingsley also had a twin brother). Thus almost every character Spider-Man knew became a suspect, from Harry Osborn, to Flash Thompson, to the Kingpin’s son, Richard Fisk.
Even Marvel’s editors didn’t know who the Hobgoblin really was because Stern refused to tell them. Hence why Amazing Spider-Man vol. #289, written by Peter David, mistakenly “unmasked” Daily Bugle reporter Ned Leeds as the Hobgoblin. Only until the miniseries Hobgoblin Lives–almost a decade later–did Stern finally reveal the truth.