[Meeting…] Jonah Jameson

John Jonah Jameson is one of the most important characters in Spider-Man despite not having powers or a good relationship with the spider hero. We all know Jameson's hatred of Spider-man as well as all the bad press and rumors that this journalist has invented to harm him. But that is the least bad thing he has done, because as you will see in this article, Jonah Jameson can be as evil as he is stubborn.

And you say your boss is bad?

John Jonah Jameson is the editor of the Daily Bugle newspaper and the boss of Peter Parker (Spider-man), who receives fights and little money every time he tries to sell photos of the spider hero to his boss, who is unable to see that Spider-man is a hero despite the evidence being enormous (such as, for example, that he has saved his life on more than a dozen occasions).

In that sense Jameson is a journalist who fits quite well with what we have in our society, he only believes what he wants to believe, he only says what he wants to say and he doesn't mind falsifying or manipulating information as long as the news says what he wants it to say.

Jonah began his journalism career while in high school, working as a part-time reporter. One day he obtained important information about a case of corruption in the area's police, information that cost his informant his life, which led Jameson to consider whether or not to write that news. The editor of his regular newspaper refused to publish it so Jameson went to the competition (The Daily Bugle) where he published the story, despite having suffered beatings and even an attempted murder.

From that moment on, Jonah worked at the Bugle, a newspaper that he ended up buying at a time when it was close to bankruptcy. Jonah Jameson ran the newspaper with an iron fist, treating his workers like trash and ignoring everyone's opinion, except that of his editor-in-chief (Robbie Robertson), whom he pays attention to from time to time.

Jameson: Enemy of Spider-man

Luck decided that Peter Parker (Spider-man) ended up working for Jameson, selling him photos that he took of himself doing his heroic acts. However, Jonah was very clear that was going to use all possible editorial and journalistic resources to discredit the hero, regardless of what happened in reality. Not content with that, he also managed to take the wall-crawler to court on some occasions, which made the readers laugh out loud.

Although Jameson has great respect for law enforcement officers (police, firefighters, military...), he totally despises masked superheroes, since he considers that they are doing what they want for their own reasons that have nothing to do with justice (something similar to what Jameson does with the news in his newspaper, wow).

Journalist vs spider

If you think that Jameson is satisfied with bad publicity for Spider-man, you are very wrong, because this journalist's hatred for Spider-man is so great that He has tried to kill him on more than one occasion.. Yes, as you hear, Jameson has broken the law (and his own moral code) by hiring assassins and supervillains to kill Spider-Man.

One of those cases gave rise to the villain known as Scorpion, as it was Jameson who convinced MacDonald Gargan (a detective he hired to spy on Peter Parker) to undergo an experiment that ended up melting him into the scorpion suit. This situation caused Gargan to try to take revenge on the journalist, who was saved by Spider-man from the monster he had created.

If you think that this situation made Jameson reconsider his evil plans to kill Spider-man, you are very wrong. Well, he is also responsible for the construction of the well-known Spider-Slayer robots, becoming himself the one who controlled some of the models to be able to kill Spider-man with his own hands.

This type of situation has led Jonah to be blackmailed or threatened by various enemies of Spider-man, who knew his dark secrets or were directly upset with the articles published by the Daily Bugle.

During the events of Civil War, Spider-Man revealed his secret identity on television, at which point Jonah Jameson suffered a severe setback when he discovered that his photographer was the being he had tried to kill on so many occasions. Far from feeling compassion for Spider-man (now that he knew who was hiding under the mask), Jameson decided to sue Peter Parker for fraud, since he had been paying him for years to find and photograph Spider-man, not for effortlessly taking photos of himself.

Conclusion and Recommendations

John Jonah Jameson is one of those characters that the more you get to know, the less you like. His role as the tyrant boss of the Daily Bugle has its charm despite not being too original (since he is practically a carbon copy of Perry White, Clark Kent/Superman's boss) but Jonah Jameson who pays for experiments to create supervillains or killer robots to try to kill Spider-man is much less interesting.

One of the things I like about the Spider-Man universe are the “normal” characters that are part of it, that's why I don't usually like it when one of those normal and ordinary people that are part of Peter Parker's life becomes a superhero or supervillain, a situation that unfortunately is very common.

Jameson is a constant character in the history of Spider-man so if you want to read something about him you just have to turn to the collections of the spider hero, his animated series and movies. In Sam Raimi's trilogy he is played almost masterfully by J.K. Simmons, despite the fact that the character was quite ridiculed (something common in these films).

Due to his constant run-ins with heroes and villains, this character usually plays an important role in many wall-crawler stories. Although you can also look for some of the strangest ones, such as the trials between Jameson and Spider-man or when the journalist became mayor of New York.