The Ned Leeds featured in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films is very different from what was shown in the comics published in the 1960s, in which Ned only appears as a character interested in Betty Brant, one the first flames of Peter, and only then will the two crush a true friendship before Leeds finally becomes a hobgoblin.
Ned Leeds first appeared in Volume 18 of The Amazing Spider-Man, published in 1964 by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, the two upstream authors in the world of Spidey. Peter was struggling with numerous problems at the time and didn’t have enough time to hang out with Betty, who instead began dating Ned. Only 12 volumes later, on the 30th, Leeds asked Betty to marry himHowever, the union will not take place until issue 156 is published 11 years later.
On this occasion, Peter appeared as a witness for Ned, as if to underscore the deep friendship that was born between the two. meanwhile the original hobgoblin Roderick Kingsley had faked his death to return later when Leeds himself appeared as the villain in issue 257, signed by Tom DeFalco, Ron Frenz, Josef Rubinstein, Joe Rosen and Christie Scheele. We’ll have to wait until 1997, however, to better understand how that season handover took place in the miniseries Spider-Man: Hobgoblin Lives by Rober Stern and Ron Frenz, in which Jason Macedale played the role of the hobgoblin before he was killed by Kingsley after making false statements about Ned about the villain’s origin.
Macedale’s death was of particular interest to Peter and Betty, who began research to clear this up. The real hobgoblin then kidnapped Betty and told her the story of how he had kidnapped Ned before. He was afraid that the reporter was chasing him. He later decided to brainwash him with a special machine and let him do dirty work to deal with Rose, the mafia boss son of Winston Fisk, aka Kingpin.
The brainwashing made him become Ned is particularly aggressive and violent, especially towards Betty. Kingsley soon got tired of constantly dealing with Ned’s paranoia and decided to reveal the history of Leeds to the stranger. He trusted that he would kill him, an event that had already happened in the past in a very specific story.
In 1987 with the publication of the one-shot story Spider-Man versus Wolverinand Peter is in Berlin with Ned, who went in search of a murderer named Charlemagne, who apparently killed former KGB agents. While they are there Some strangers attack and kill Ned.
Recall that Aunt May was saved by a villain in the Marvel Universe and we leave you to the aftermath of the King in Black event that led Miles Morales to face a friend of hers.