J. Jonah Jameson

John Jonah Jameson, Jr. was an American journalist, editor and politician best known for serving as the editor-in-chief of the Daily Bugle from 1956 to 1992. Jameson was born to John Jonah Jameson, Sr. and Mary Jameson in Brooklyn in 1913 and was an only child. The elder Jameson would disappear in 1915, leaving the younger Jameson to be raised by his mother, who eventually married his uncle David Jameson in 1917. David Jameson was a veteran of the Mollusc invasion of 1898 and the Spanish-American War, but abused his wife and stepson. In 1925, Mary Jameson was killed by a masked bandit, instilling Jameson with a deep distrust of figures hiding their identities. Jameson would be a Boy Scout growing up and attended Midtown High School, where he pursued interests in boxing and photography. It was in high school that Jameson would meet Joan Leland, his eventual first wife whom he married shortly after graduation. After graduating, Jameson would obtain a degree in journalism from Empire State University and began working as a journalist for the Daily Bugle in 1937.

During the Corpo regime of Buzz Windrip, Jameson contributed to publications passed around the New Underground against the government while maintaining a more government-friendly facade in his day job at the Bugle. After the fall of the Corpo regime, Jameson helped highlight the illegal actions and disinformation Windrip and his allies had stoked (such as denial of the Mollusc incursion in New Jersey in 1938) in a series of articles in the Daily Bugle that earned him a great deal of praise. In 1939, Jameson was among many who witnessed the clash between the Human Torch Jim Hammond and Namor the Sub-Mariner. Jameson's photographs of the fight became the iconic symbol of a dawning age of superpowered figures. Jameson viewed these figures with scepticism, worrying that they would seek to assert themselves over humanity a la Hynkel's Nazi Germany. Jameson did moderate his attitude towards superpowered figures after a series of interviews with Clark Savage, Jr. and, following the US entering the Second World War and the debut of Captain America, Jameson would shift towards becoming a war correspondent. Jameson was embedded with the Howling Commandos unit headed by Nick Fury for a time, but eventually was moved around the front. Jameson participated in coverage of the D-Day landings, capturing a number of iconic images of clashes between landing Allied forces and the Nazi-armed dinosaurs used to try to ward off the assault.

Jameson returned from the war and had a son, John Jonah Jameson III, in 1946. In the aftermath of the Second World War, Jameson would continue to operate as a journalist. It was during this period his earlier wariness towards vigilantes and superhumans would only increase. After the death of Joan in a mugging in 1949, Jameson increasingly took a harsher tone towards 'men in masks.' Jameson offered sympathetic coverage of businessman Lex Luthor's hostility to Superman, previously something that had alienated many people. Jameson also excoriated the leadership of Gotham City, a neighbour of Jameson's own New York, for tolerating the actions of Batman. This was part of a broader shift for Jameson, as his articles increasingly echoed conservative reactionary sentiment. Jameson advocated for the swift and immediate arrest of all followers of Ras the Exhorter following the 1952 Harlem riots and additionally suggested Ras himself be executed. He also defended Johnny Iselin's anti-communist crusades throughout the early 1950's and it is believed his articles in the Bugle were a key motivator for the Kamperhaufe campaign to put Iselin on the ticket in 1952. Jameson called for a violent response to the arrival of Klaatu in 1952, arguing that 'no other species has the right to dictate human affairs' and advocating a 'show of force' against the Citadel. When the Kanamits arrived in 1954, Jameson was among the most vocal sceptics of their intentions and claimed vindication when their desire to farm humanity for food was revealed. This seeming prescience was probably what enabled Jameson to take on the position as editor-in-chief of the Bugle in 1956.

As editor-in-chief of the Daily Bugle, Jameson simultaneously drew intense praise and criticism. Despite his anti-communist pivot in the 1950's, under Jameson's direction the Bugle took an increasingly sympathetic stance towards civil rights activists in the American South, thanks in part to the selection of Jean Louise Finch as the main correspondent covering civil rights issues. Jameson's Bugle also broke the story that the Soviets were placing missiles in Cuba and Tropico, precipitating the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and it was under his watch that Jim Dial exposed the near-miss of the 1958 Doomsday crisis between the US and USSR, exposing the incompetence of the former Muffley administration. On the other hand, these developments were matched with a strong editorial bias against superheroes. When the homo novis/mutant population began to spike, Jameson's Bugle was among the first to advocate for mandatory mutant registration. Jameson was most infamously opposed to the actions of Spider-Men, whom he dubbed the 'Spider-Menace' and claimed was a secret criminal. Ironically, Jameson's main source of pictures of Spider-Man was Peter Parker, who was in fact Spider-Man himself. Jameson even helped sponsor Mac Gargan to become the Scorpion, creating a supervillain in his own right. The Daily Bugle heavily focused on collateral damage caused by superheroes, running numerous pieces on the inadvertent harm caused by figures like Mr. Incredible, Rorscharch and even Superman. This helped prompt the government to pass the Super Relocation Act in 1967, placing some of the primary targets of Jameson into witness protection. The Daily Bugle also insinuated the attempted attack by Galactus in 1966 was a hoax, to the criticism of many other media personalities such as Huntley Haverstock and Phil Sheldon. He also was a vehement anti-alien individual, accusing Martian superhero J'onn J'onzz of being a sleeper agent for alien invaders and claiming that Pod People, Zygons and Skrulls were still present everywhere after their incursions were thwarted.

Jameson was a strong supporter of the war effort in Vietnam and Sarkhan, cheering the deployment of American superheroes such as Doctor Manhattan and Iron Man into the conflict. Jameson criticised Captain America when he went rogue in a bid to defend civilians in the region. Jameson ran op-eds by CEA Agent Blackford Oakes defending the morality of the conflict, including outright denial of incidents like the My Lai Massacre and Colonel Walter Kurtz going rogue and setting up a cult of personality. It is likely for this reason that Jameson was arrested by President Max Frost's suede-denim secret police and imprisoned until a countercoup removed Frost from power. Jameson was generally favorable to Frost's successor Richard Monckton, at least until the Watergate scandal was broken by Mark Forman. As worse details of the scandal came out, even the Bugle would come to call for Monckton's resignation, which came in 1970. Jameson would go on to treat most presidents of the 1970's with general disdain either for being too weak (Lyman, Dilman, Palatine, etc.) or corrupt (Fremont), though he did maintain a degree of respect for Henry MacNeil's steadfastness. The Bugle did maintain rigorous standards for much other journalism, including a well-praised series of articles by Jameson himself on the subject of Howard Beale's death and the forces behind it.

Jameson's son was among the astronauts originally slated to participate in the opening of Space Hotel USA in 1970, but did not reach the Hotel before the Knids' attack on it. During the subsequent war to exterminate the Knids, Jameson took the unusual step of assigning himself as a war correspondent, as his son was among those fighting. He cited the Knids as proof of aliens' dangerous nature, opposing the diplomacy the UN had with the Space Cats and advocating a violent response to the Devil's Tower incident. He did continue to attack most superheroes and when Senator Robert Kelly first introduced the Keene Act in 1975, Jameson was among its most steadfast supporters. Momentum for this legislation stalled until the Black Prom Massacre of 1977, carried out by the mutant Carrie White, which allowed for this restriction of superheroes to go into effect. Jameson heralded this as a triumph until the Supreme Court invalidated it in 1979, which enraged Jameson. The Daily Bugle's coverage is said to have greatly dipped in quality starting around this point, as it moved away from investigative reporting and more towards tabloid-like coverage of supposed misdeeds by superhumans, celebrities and politicians. Most infamously, the Daily Bugle spent more page time covering details Senator Joe Tynan's affair with Karen Traynor than the ongoing Iranian Revolution and repeated the claim that Spider-Man was responsible for killing Gwen Stacy in any article so much as mentioning the superhero. Jameson did manage to get married, marrying Dr. Marla Madison in 1981.

In the 1980's, Jameson became more and more vocal politically. While already quite conservative, Jameson had up until this point kept some degree of separation between the Bugle as a whole and his personal views. With the Cyclops administration's repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, the Daily Bugle quickly became more and more of a mouthpiece for conservative positions. Many of his more respected journalists, including Finch, Dials, Lou Grant, Betty Brant and Nick Alexander, would leave the publication and Jameson replaced them with the likes of Oates, Peter Petrawicki, Birch Barlow, and Mary Marsh, all of whom would populate the conservative media ecosystem for years to come. The Daily Bugle advocated for hawkish foreign policy, including explicit support for building a doomsday device as a deterrent, endorsing assassinating Erik Lensherr to restore the pre-mutant regime in Genosha and heavily favoring privatization. He used the Gozer incident of 1983 to argue that government bureaucrats were unnecessarily constraining businesses and that this posed a threat to public wellbeing. When Raoul Duke responded to the Bugle's arguments by citing the ScrumLabs disaster, Jameson's Bugle doubled down and called Duke a 'drug-addled hippie' in the article, to widespread criticism. Jameson launched a bid for Mayor of New York City in 1983, though he ended up losing. Jameson was listed as a target for capture by Soviet forces during Operation Red Dawn, though owing to the failure to reach Manhattan they were never able to make a serious attempt to capture him. Jameson did begin to move away from this ideological rigidity after the Third World War, especially following the defeat of the Fascinator invasion. Jameson found that he had been taken in by an alien conspiracy, leading him to rethink his perspective.

In the late 1980's, Jameson began attempting to restore the Daily Bugle's reputation. As many of the hard-right commentators he had hired had already moved on to other ventures, Jameson simply sought to hire less biased figures in his newsroom. Putting Frank Fontana, Kit Kittredge, April O'Neil and Herb Welch in his newsroom, in addition to bringing back Brant, helped begin the process of restoring the Daily Bugle's reputation. Jameson steered coverage away from superheroes for a while, instead focusing on more standard events. Many were shocked when the Daily Bugle explicitly advocated for the US to accept Tenctonese refugees, as it was such a far cry from the paper's historical xenophobia. The Daily Bugle also closely covered the rising power of the Augment bloc amidst a Soviet-American detente, warning about Khan Noonien Singh''s ambitions to secure global domination. The triumph of Augment-aligned forces in Japan precipitated the American-Japanese War of 1992. Jameson chose to personally accompany several Naval vessels in their confrontations with Japanese forces and the Daily Bugle broke the story about the so-called 'Battle Royale' launched by the nationalist regime after the Akademi High School massacre of 1989. It was this conflict that ultimately led to Jameson's retirement as well, however. Besides a health scare as the war wound down, Jameson personally asked Brant to go to the Capitol to cover the confirmation of Jack Ryan as Vice President. Shortly after the confirmation, the Capitol was attacked by a Japanese die-hard, killing most present including Brant. Jameson, blaming himself, resigned from the Daily Bugle a month later.

ameson remained on the sidelines throughout the Eugenics Wars, though his bid to pivot the Daily Bugle back to reputable journalism successfully restored much of its earlier reputation (ironically secured in part by his departure before he could pivot once again). Jameson for a time hosted a radio show discussing current events, such as the resignation of Jack Stanton, the Harvester invasion (which Jameson survived due to visiting Metropolis to see his old friend Jimmy Olsen for the 4th of July) and the Eugenics Wars. Jameson began to warm up to superheroes towards the end of his life, in particular once he discovered that Marla's niece Mattie Franklin, whom the couple had adopted, was operating as Spider-Woman. In his final broadcasts, he denounced many of the same positions he had once advocated for, such as superhero regulation, mutant registration and even more general hawkish foreign policy positions. Jameson in his old age thus alienated many of his earlier supporters, but regained the affection of many whom had previously turned on him, including Parker who in a visit to Jameson in 1999 revealed he was in fact Spider-Man. Jameson took this to his grave. Jameson died in 2001 at the age of 88, shortly before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Jameson's legacy is controversial owing to the constant changes the man himself underwent throughout his life. His wife Marla was a victim of the Clover incident of 2009. His son John Jameson died fighting the Yeerks in 2002.