The Hobgoblin thread below got me thinking. Did Stern leave the book because of the impending 'Black Costume' storyline and he just didn't agree with it or feel compelled to do stories about it? It just seems odd that he would leave in the middle of a year-plus saga with Hobgoblin. Or did Shooter handpick DeFalco to cover the Black Costume story and it just happened to occur at a bad time, plot wise?

Stern was still doing Avengers at the time, right? Didn't seem like his schedule was too full.