Roger Stern Archive

After months of planning, plotting and misdirection, Amazing Spider-Man #249 shows an invigorated Hobgoblin who is finally starting to make his master plan of conquest apparent to his intended victims. Beyond the Hobgoblin’s initial introduction in ASM #238, this issue and the two that follow (marking the end the

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Amazing Spider-Man #245 reminds us of a period of the Hobgoblin’s existence where his secret identity was not the source of such hand-wringing and controversy. As he did for the character’s three previous appearances in ASM, writer Roger Stern plants small clues along with some serious pieces of misdirection

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Despite only making his first appearance a handful of issues ago, Hobgoblin’s rapid ascension to power in both the fictitious world of Spider-Man comic books, and the real world of public perception is on front and center display in Amazing Spider-Man #244. Showing how much confidence he has in

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What’s so unique about Amazing Spider-Man #239 is how writer Roger Stern takes his new creation, the Hobgoblin, and expertly crafts the villain as a legitimate physical and psychological threat to Spider-Man, while also exposing the character’s vulnerabilities and weaknesses. In the 20 years of Spider-Man comics that preceded

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Granted, I’m aided by the power of 20-20 hindsight, but there’s something about Amazing Spider-Man #238 that just comes across as being “special.” Even from a collectability standpoint – when I first started buying pricier back issues in the 1990s, I remember looking up ASM #238 in my Wizard

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I wanted to do something “special” to mark Superior Spider-Man month beyond just writing about all the new titles Marvel is currently pumping out. While I’ve recently started to retro-review/wax poetic about some story-arcs in full (as opposed to what I was doing when I first launched Chasing Amazing,

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Years before the birth of my son, I was told that nothing changes how a person views the world quite like having a child. While this idea always made a great deal of sense to me, I’m still amazed by just how profound the actual experience of having a

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With Amazing Spider-Man officially “ending” at issue #700 two weeks ago, and the debut of a brand-new Spider-Man title this week, Superior Spider-Man, I thought now was as good of a time of any to comb through 700 issues of ASM (plus the annuals) and highlight some of my

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I’m a little embarrassed to admit this, but when I started reading Spider-Man comic books in the 1980s, I was a little late to the Hobgoblin party. Trust me, as a long-time collector and enthusiast, I understand why he was a big deal. But since my first comic was

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If you want to adequately blow the mind of an 18-year-old (or depending on the age of those of you out there reading this, want to have your minds collectively blown), send them a copy of Jorge Luis Borges’ Ficciones. While the collection is filled with a number of

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