The whole Jim Owsley and Tom Defalco and (through no fault of his own) Peter David "Ned Leeds is the Hobgoblin not Richard Fisk because he's the Rose, oh and by the way you're fired, oops I killed Ned and here's Daredevil in a fat suit" shenanigans.

To hear Owsley tell it, he and Defalco were friends, maybe his (Owsley) only friend at Marvel. Tom D's plan was just as carefully done as Stern's and with his (Roger's) blessing I believe. What's to gain by derailing this whole thing? Was it an honest mistake? Were things that bad behind the scenes? Missed deadlines? Crappy attitudes? 

As an aside I liked Stern's idea better and his slow burn into the mystery of Hobby was incredible, and I read them all at once years later. I can't imagine what it was like having to wait a whole month in between fixes!

For my money the worst instance of editorial interference was the restoration of Jean Grey so they could have X-Factor. While it was Kurt Busiek's stupid fanboy idea to make it so that she wasn't the Pheonix, Shooter went along with it, apparently thought it was a great marketing ploy, and presented it to Claremont only when it was too late for Claremont to have a say. The destruction of the characters of Cyclops and Madelyne Prior were bad enough, but this was the first of big superhero resurrections that have come to plague the industry, as well as the 'everything resets to the status quo and nothing develops' problem.

I find it hard to blame DKR for the problems with Batman, since the Batman comics were still really good until the turn of the century. Editorial did really start to kill Batman once they kicked Dixon out, culminating in the craptacular War Games.

Queseda's mandates for Spider-Man and X-Men in the mid-2000s were so spectacularly bad it makes my head spin. Spider-Man erases his marriage and the Scarkett Witch erases almost all mutants?

Pretty much everything Dan Didio mandates turns to crap. The man should never have been allowed anywhere near anything that isn't a marketing department, and certainly should never have been allowed to make any creative decisions. And Bob Harris just shouldn't be in comics to begin with.

^^^ This! Ironically it was Shooter who was insistent that Jean die for her crimes, that's what made it groundbreaking. Important. Insert superlative. Then Layton has the idea to get the band together, Busiek as you said goes all fanboy and X-Factor is born and ruins the Marvel Universe! I'm kidding but fallout was great indeed, not the least of which was Maddy, whom I loved with the X-Men in the post Massacre stories becomes redundant (which is stupid, like there's a redhead quota on the X-books) and they kill her. Ugh.

Just as an aside, I'm pretty sure I've heard Kurt Busiek say before that he didn't really like the idea of them bringing Jean back. He actually came up with the idea of how they could possibly do it before X-Men #137 was even published. The idea got around the comic grapevine and when they decided they wanted to do X-Factor, his idea was used as the explanation. But I don't think it's fair to blame him for her return; they wanted to do it, and just used his idea as the means.

He did hop right on board to do his part in FF didn't he. I never met JB but I can't help but think he relished sticking it to CC, even if it meant crapping on his own masterpiece. I'd like to think he's not that capricious, but who knows.

One big difference I see between the two is that Watchmen was commenting on the treatment of female characters in superhero comics. That's why the Silk Spectre doesn't have any powers or actually do anything, and is just there to provide character motivation for the men in the comic. It's intentional commentary.

I haven't read all - or much - of Identity Crisis, but what I have read seems like a dumpster fire.

Watchmen did no damage whatsoever to established properties.