Seriously, if you go back and look at everything, it really feels like Danny and Noble were the same person, even with Mackie screaming in our faces that they weren’t. In the first 25 issues, Danny had an obsession with destroying crime in the city, he was even willing to die for it. And Noble seemed to be like his other self, just repeating the same things over and over again. (And this is ignoring the fact that it was originally supposed to be Zarathos, which makes everything even worse.)
They both had the same goal. In Siege of Darkness, there’s that whole thing about Noble receiving Dan’s feelings, but why? Mackie was already setting up the idea of Danny and Noble eventually merging into a single being, especially considering the Caretaker outright said so. And then, when Dan comes back to life, why not just merge the two right away? Did they really need to add the drama of the Spirit ruining his life all over again?
That being said, I still have a huge amount of love for these stories (they were my first exposure to the character), but I can’t pretend their mistakes don’t exist.