J. Jonah Jameson
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John Jonah Jameson (also known as J. Jonah Jameson, J.J. or J.J.J.) is a supporting character featured in Marvel Comics’s Spider-Man series. Created by writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko, he first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #1 (March 1963).
Jameson is the publisher and editor-in-chief of the Daily Bugle, a New York newspaper. Recognizable by his mustache, flattop haircut and ever-present cigar, he carries out an Ahab-like smear campaign against Spider-Man that has turned much of the city against the hero. Ironically, he employs Spider-Man’s alter ego Peter Parker as a photojournalist.
Portrayals of Jameson have varied throughout the years. Sometimes he is shown as a foolishly stubborn and pompous skinflint who micromanages his employees and resents Spider-Man out of jealousy. Some writers portray him as an ethical newsman whose campaign against Spider-Man stems from honest distrust and who has a stern but fatherly relationship with his employees, including Peter Parker. In either case, he has remained an important part of the Spider-Man mythos.
Jameson seems to be modeled on the American yellow journalism tycoons of the 1890s and 1900s, particularly William Randolph Hearst. Creator Stan Lee once said that Jameson was based on the impression that people have of Lee himself.
Jameson is also the father of John Jameson, the minor Spider-Man adversary-turned-supporting character Man-Wolf.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life
According to "Behind the Moustache," a story featured in Spider-Man's Tangled Web #20 (January 2003), he was born to David and Betty Jameson. His father was an officer of the United States Army, a war veteran decorated as a hero; at home, however, David regularly abused his wife and son. As a result, J. Jonah Jameson grew convinced that "No one's a hero every day of the week" and "Even the real heroes can't keep it up all the time". He was a Boy Scout during his childhood. In high school, his interests were mainly boxing and photography. He met his first wife, Joan, when they both joined their high school's photo club. When the school's three top athletes started bullying him, he fought back and beat all three of them to a pulp. This impressed Joan, and they started dating. They married as soon as they finished school.
After school, Jameson sought employment as a journalist. According to Marvels #1, he found employment in the Daily Bugle and bragged to his colleagues that he would one day run the newspaper. In 1939, he witnessed the first appearances of Jim Hammond, the android Human Torch, and Namor McKenzie (aka Namor the Sub-Mariner, Prince of Atlantis), who are jointly considered Marvel's first superheroes. Jameson was immediately skeptical of both of them; he doubted that someone with superhuman powers who operated outside the law could be trusted. When the USA joined World War II in 1941, Jameson served as a war journalist in Europe. Sergeant Fury and His Howling Commandos #110 featured him as covering a mission of Sergeant Nicholas Fury, head of a team of commandos during the war (and later agent and eventually director of S.H.I.E.L.D., a fictional secret agency playing an important role in the Marvel Universe.)
After the war, he and Joan had a son, John, who grew up to become an astronaut. When Jameson returned from a journalistic mission covering the Korean War, he was grieved to find that his wife had died in a mugging incident during his absence. Focusing on his professional life to dull the pain, he was eventually promoted to chief editor of the Daily Bugle, and eventually came to own the paper.
Jameson gained a mostly deserved reputation for journalistic integrity, but his greedy opportunism and unyielding, belligerent stubbornness made him more than a few enemies.
[edit] Jameson and Spider-Man
Those flaws became most obvious when Spider-Man became a media sensation. Jameson strove to blacken Spider-Man's reputation; casting the masked hero as an unhinged vigilante not only boosted the Bugle's circulation, but also punished Spider-Man for overshadowing Jameson's astronaut son. When Spider-Man tried to counter the bad press by rescuing his son from danger, Jameson vindicatively accused the hero of staging the situation for his own benefit.
This episode set a pattern with Jameson's and Spider-Man's typical relationship: Jameson publicly accusing Spider-Man of numerous crimes and misdeeds, only to feel continually obliged to print almost as many retractions after being proven wrong. Jameson refused to accept responsibility for his unprofessional conduct, however, and blamed Spider-Man for trying to ruin him. While he would never admit it, Jameson was jealous of Spider-Man's selfless heroism, to the point that, despite all evidence to the contrary, he convinced himself that the hero had some hidden, sinister agenda. Even while Spider-Man saved his life and those of his loved ones numerous times, his determination to find some flaw in the hero only increased. For his part, Spider-Man's reaction has ranged from frustration and anger at the ungrateful publisher, which has lead to occasional pranks to antagonize him, to an amused acceptance of his self destructive stubborness. Ironically, Jameson himself was something of a hero in his reporter days, when he labored tirelessly against organized crime and in support of civil rights, so Jameson's suspicion that Spider-Man cannot possibly be as good as he seems might be interpreted as an extrapolation of the impossible standards Jameson has set for himself, or a manifestation of the abuse he suffered from his "hero" father.
Jameson posted rewards for Spider-Man's capture or secret identity, hunted him with Spencer Smythe's Spider-Slayer robots, and even commissioned super-powered agents to defeat the masked man. He hired a private detective called Mac Gargan, put him through a regimen of genetic enhancement, and transformed him into the Scorpion—who soon went insane and turned on his benefactor. Although Spider-Man has protected Jameson from this monster, Jameson kept his role in creating the Scorpion secret for years. He was even so foolish as to create another superbeing, who turned into a minor supervillain, the Human Fly, who had his own vendetta against him. At one time, he hired Silver Sable and her Wild Pack to hunt Spider-Man down before he could be proven innocent.
For all his hostility towards Spider-Man, Jameson needs photographs of his heroics to sell papers, and Peter Parker soon took advantage of that by taking pictures of himself as Spider-Man and selling them to the Bugle with few questions asked.
In Amazing Spider-Man #162 (November 1976), Jameson first introduced himself to Dr. Marla Madison, a distinguished scientist and daughter of a deceased friend of his. He asked for her help in creating a new Spider-Slayer, one of a series of robots created to defeat Spider-Man, although Spider-Man has managed to survive their attacks and destroy each of them. Madison was interested in the challenge, and joined Jameson in his efforts. The two eventually grew closer, eventually marrying in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #18. Jameson remains a devoted, if a little over-protective, husband to his second wife. The two have also adopted their niece, Mattie Franklin, who, unbeknownst to her aunt and uncle, is also Spider-Woman. In the third volume of Alias, Mattie's secret was revealed, as, while searching for Jessica Drew in a drug-induced haze, she found former superhero Jessica Jones. Jones tracked down the girl and found that Mattie's boyfriend was using her blood to make Mutant Growth Hormone.
The guilt for creating the Scorpion caught up with Jameson when the Hobgoblin blackmailed him about it. When he received the threats, rather than succumb to the Hobgoblin, Jameson chose instead to reveal it to the world in a public editorial. Naturally of course, he neglected to mention his role in creating the Fly and financing several of the Spider-Slayers. He stepped down as the Bugle's editor-in-chief, delegating the post to his immediate subordinate, Joseph "Robbie" Robertson, but Jameson remained its publisher.
Jameson's influence on the paper as its publisher will be shown in the upcoming Civil War: Frontline where he pressures his staff into supporting the government's Super-human Registration Act, still directing the general tone of the paper, despite losing his more hands-on position. [1]
To his credit, Jameson has also been a tireless crusader for civil rights and labor union rights. He has even stood up for mutant rights, despite his dislike of superhuman individuals; for the most part it is only superhumans who set themselves above others by acting outside the law who earn his ire, not superhumans per se. Jameson is admittedly more tolerant of superheroes who act with government sanction, such as the Avengers as opposed to uncontrolled costumed vigilantism. He has also come to Peter's aid financially, although on the sly, and has repeatedly gone after organized crime and corrupt officials, despite repeated threats and attempts on his and his staff's lives.
In Civil War #2, upon seeing the true identity of Spider-Man to be Peter Parker, he faints upon the realization that the greatest thorn in his side was right under his nose. It has been since revealed that Jameson had always believed that between him and Peter Parker was a bond of trust ever since the young man stumbled into his office, and he had always regarded him as another son, the "last honest man" in the world, and aside from his rudeness, he had always bought his photos, even the crappier ones, to help him in a discreet manner. After the public confession of Peter, he felt so betrayed that it shattered their bond, and channeled all his hatred into "making Peter Parker pay", despite Parker (as enforcer) and Jameson both actively supporting the Super-human Registration Act. For starters, he had planned to sue his former protege for fraud, demanding back all the money he paid Peter over the years and more. However, he has hit a stumbling block in his drive to get vengeance as the government may grant Parker amnesty for his years of being a vigilante and all the acts he had done to protect his secret identity, which includes taking photos of himself (see She-Hulk #9). Since Parker has legally obeyed the Super-Human Registration Act, and unable to stand the fact that he may not be able to do anything about it, plus the fact that his son had married a costumed super-human, Jameson goes into a fit of rage, and even attacked his new daughter-in-law with the original Spider-Slayer. Luckily for all those involved, the She-Hulk reduced the ancient monstrosity to scrap.
In order to soothe things over with her new-father-in-law, Jennifer Walters, the She-Hulk, said she would take the case for fraud against Spider-man. However, in private she told John that she intends to drag the case out for as long as possible to frustrate his father.
[edit] Other media adaptations
Jameson has been a regular character in almost all adaptations of Spider-Man.
The 1960s animated series contained the most negative depiction with the character, voiced by Paul Kligman, as an egotistical loudmouth who automatically accuses Spider-Man of any crime, even when the evidence clearly contradicts him.
J. Jonah Jameson appeared in the 1981 Spider-Man series and Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends voiced by William Woodson.
Subsequent depictions have portrayed the character as more reasonable in his beliefs of masked men, particularly in the 1990s animated series, in which he was voiced by Ed Asner (whose casting may have been inspired by Asner being well-known role as another fictional news editor, Lou Grant). In this series, Jameson's hatred of Spider-Man is based less on his powers and more to his wearing a mask; in this continuity, his wife was killed by a masked gunman.
The series also portrays his integrity as a journalist, refusing to cover up the truth even when it's in his best interests, and portrays his loyalty to those who work for him. He secretly hired attorney Matt Murdock to defend Peter Parker when Peter was framed by Richard Fisk and personally uncovered evidence exonerating Robbie when he was framed by Tombstone (Jameson's cigar-smoking trademark characteristic was removed from the more recent animated TV incarnations).
The character's first live-action appearances were in 1970s television, performed by David White in the television movie and Robert F. Simon in the subsequent television series. In both these incarnations, Jameson's abrasive, flamboyant personality was toned down and the character was portrayed as a more avuncular figure.
More recently, J. K. Simmons played a more authentic version of Jameson in the feature film. In the movie, Jameson retains his dislike for Spider-Man, but is basically a good, loyal man; under the right circumstances, he would die to protect others (as demonstrated by his refusal to reveal to the Green Goblin the identity of the photographer who took all the pictures of Spider-Man was). Jameson also, at some level, knows that Spider-Man is a hero. He even went so far as to admit it in Spider-Man 2, though true to his origins, he recanted almost immediately and became infuriated with "Spidey" once again (when Spider-Man stole his suit back after disappearing for a period of time). Here, when asked why he disliked Spider-Man, he pointed out that "he wears a mask. What's he got to hide?"
Mrs. Jameson is alive and well in the movies, however, being mentioned in the first movie and seen in the second. Jameson also retains his miserly ways in the film. At the wedding of John and Mary-Jane Watson in the second film, once it becomes clear that the bride had left the groom at the altar, the first thing Jameson does is tell his wife to call the wedding caterer and "tell her not to open the caviar."
In the third film, it is believed that he hires Eddie Brock Jr. to follow Peter Parker and find out why Mary Jane chose Parker over his son.
[edit] Video Games
Jameson has appeared in many of the Spider-man video games, usually as a supporting character.
The snooty editor-in-chief of the Daily Bugle appeared in the 2000 Spider-Man video game. He appeared when the Scorpion tried to kill him because Jameson put Mac Garkin, the Scorpion, in the armour suit he is forever stuck in. Spider-Man eventually saves Jameson and defeats Scorpion in battle. However, Jameson doesn't thank Spider-Man because at the beginning of the game, Spider-Man was seen stealing the seemingly reformed Dr. Otto Octavius' machine (Jameson doesn't know that Spider-Man was framed). He even told two S.W.A.T. cops to shoot down and kill Spider-Man. Luckily, the hero escaped by jumping out of a window with him saying, "J.J., you're out of my will! I mean it this time!"
Jameson also appeared in the two games based on the films, with his character being based on the film version.
Though not an official appearance, in Marvel Superheroes (Arcade Game) and subsequent Capcom 2d fighting games featuring Spider-Man, Jameson is verbally mentioned. In his victory pose after winning a round, Spider-man casts a web up to the "ceiling" to the bottom of which he attaches a camera. He then stands over his fallen opponent and makes a "thumbs-up" gesture as the camera flashes and says "This one's for J.J." In Marvel vs. Capcom, in addition to the victory pose, Spider-man poses for a picture with his partner after winning the game, stating "I know Jameson will use this picture to make me look like a bad guy."
[edit] Comparisons to Perry White
Jameson has various similarities to the Superman mythos' Perry White (the editor-in-chief of The Daily Planet newspaper, and boss of Superman's alter ego, newspaper reporter Clark Kent). Like White, Jameson is a crusader, even an idealist in his own way, and the two men traditionally have a similar passion for cigar smoking, although the Superman comics dispensed with White's cigar-smoking in a 1990s storyline where he was diagnosed with lung cancer. Jameson, however, is considerably more rigid than White, and prefers the world to "make sense" to his own points of view (regardless of whether his point of view squares with the facts). Unlike White, it is unlikely that Jameson would react well to the news that one of his star staff members was a costumed superhero. This was proven in the Civil War storyline in which he stated how more than anything, he felt betrayed and hurt by Peter Parker because Peter lied to him for so many years.
The main differences between White and Jameson is how they act as newspaper men. Both are set on printing the truth, however due to Jameson's bias against Spider-Man, the Daily Bugle normally leans toward his views and opinions, rather than White's more objective stance with the Daily Planet. Furthermore, White's style is more than willing to give all subjects the benefit of the doubt, since Perry firmly believes on showing all sides of a story. With Jameson, readers can always expect him to print one side only (Jameson's side), and the customary 'It's all Spider-Man's doing' or 'Spider-Man is the one who's behind it all.' On many occasions, Jameson's hatred for Spider-Man has clouded his better judgement and integrity as a journalist. Possibly corresponding to this, the relatively-staid Planet has always been portrayed as a broadsheet newspaper (generally seen as more respectable), while the sensationalistic Bugle in more recent media is typically seen in tabloid format.
Jameson and White have been directly compared in several intercompany crossovers, including the second Superman/Spider-Man encounter published in 1981 and set in a universe where the DC and Marvel characters co-exist. Peter Parker briefly relocated to Metropolis and sold photographs to White, forming the opinion that White was just as tough as Jameson, but nicer. Jameson and White met for the first time in the Marvel vs DC series (in which the two universes were briefly merged) after the mysterious new owner (ultimately revealed as Wilson Fisk, aka The Kingpin) of the Planet fired White and replaced him with Jameson. White and Jameson, drawn with near-identical clothing, wristwatches, hairstyles and cigars, confronted Fisk. At the end of the series, the status quo was completely restored.
[edit] Trivia
- In the alternate reality of Earth X, everyone on Earth has been affected by the Terrigen Mists, granting everyone super powers. Jameson is turned into a donkey; literally, he becomes a jackass. It is also revealed that after he published information exposing Peter Parker as Spider-Man, his reputation was ruined, as no one trusted a man who had spent years paying the very hero he called a menace.
- Stan Lee has declared, on more than one occasion, that he would have relished the opportunity to portray Jameson in a live-action film, though he has nonetheless praised actor J.K. Simmons' performance as Jameson in the Spider-Man films, even stating that, to his disdain "[Simmons] portrays [Jameson] better than [Lee] could".
- The J in J. Jonah Jameson stands for 'John', as confirmed in Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Spider-Man 2005.
- J. Jonah Jameson's wife Joan also shares her name with Stan Lee's real-life wife.
