HOBGOBLIN

 

HOBGOBLIN II

Real Name: Jason Philip Macendale, Jr.

First Appearance: Machine Man (Vol. 1) #19, February 1981 (as Jack O'Lantern); The Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 1) #289, June 1987 (as the Hobgoblin)

Powers: Jason Philip Macendale, Jr. was a CIA agent who began his criminal career as the first Jack O'Lantern. By sheer coincidence, he employed a number of weapons very similar to the Green Goblins. He used high-voltage wrist blasters and a bag full of throwing spheres with many of the same uses as the pumpkin bombs and goblin grenades (including concussions, fragmentary explosives, flash bombs, incendiaries, tear gas, anesthetic gas, smoke clouds, and a vapor which dulled the senses, including a certain "spider-sense"). He wore a helmet stylized after a flaming pumpkin, which protected him from impact, had a built-in oxygen supply and was equipped with telescopic lenses. He rode a "pogo platform", which allows him to hover off the ground and had a powerful coil on its underside, enabling him to spring and bounce through the streets while riding on top of it. He later hired the Foreigner to kill the original Hobgoblin (Roderick Kingsley), and Kingsley arranged for them to sanction his brainwashed stand-in, Ned Leeds instead. As Kingsley safely retired a free man, Macendale stole his equipment and launched a career as Hobgoblin II.

After numerous defeats, Macendale attempted to bargain away his soul to the demon N'astirh during Inferno to receive power. On a whim, N'astirh mystically bonded Hobgoblin II to a demon instead. Mutating horribly into a living version of his old mask, Macendale gained superhuman strength and physical power roughly on par with Hobgoblin I and Spider-Man. In addition, he gained the ability to manipulate hellfire. He could project it as blasts that burned at the souls of his victims and caused destruction to inorganic targets, and he could enhance his existing goblin weaponry with it as well. He could even create tangible goblin paraphernalia out of hellfire: Spider-Man once destroyed Hobgoblin's glider in midair, and Macendale just floated there for a second as the hellfire rushed out beneath him and formed a new glider under his feet. He also occasionally demonstrated other powers, like projecting pasty ectoplasm to bind someone's arms and legs, or enveloping people in demonic cocoons that somehow transformed them into demonic-looking creatures. Exposure to Johnny Blaze's hellfire-blasting shotgun disrupted Macendale's symbiosis with the demon within him, and it ultimately broke off as its own entity, Demogoblin, leaving him powerless once more.

Macendale later again began to seek power. He tracked down Kraven's son, the Grim Hunter, and bribed him with one of his father's journals he had procured in order to gain access to Kraven's strength-enhancement serum. The Grim Hunter had been working on re-engineering his father's serum already, and agreed to the bargain. Macendale not only survived the treatment but, thanks to an anomaly in his system presumably left over from the demon, became more powerful than ever. His strength, speed, agility, endurance, and reflexes were now once again on par with Spider-Man's. Never one to quit while he was ahead, Macendale also underwent a cybernetic enhancement procedure a few months later, becoming CyberGoblin. His strength was presumably enhanced, and he was given enhanced vision, arm-mounted blades, the power to fire concussion blasts, and a limited flight capability. After Spider-Man beat Macendale this time, however, he was sent to prison where Kingsley came out of retirement, stormed the detention facility, explained to Macendale how he failed to even kill the right man, and murdered him in cold blood.

Jason Macendale was a CIA operative with military hand-to-hand combat training as well as agency-sponsored aircraft training. He also held graduate degrees in both physics and electrical engineering.