J. Jonah Jameson may be Spider-Man's biggest detractor, but I'd never really thought about why that is outside of editorial mandate and the man just being a curmudgeon in general. To my absolute surprise and delight, however, not only has Marvel already answered this question, but it turns out they did so over forty years ago.

What If? (1977) #46, by Peter Gillis, Ron Frenz, Sam de la Rosa, and Bob Sharen, asks, "What if Uncle Ben had lived?" rewriting the entire Spider-Man franchise. It turns out that Ben Parker is much more ive of his nephew being Spider-Man, and when the Daily Bugle makes one libelous headline too many off of Spider-Man's name, Ben marches straight up to J. Jonah Jameson's offices to confront him.

It turns out, however, that Jameson has a very good reason for all the negative press: he re Spider-Man from his ill-fated days as a TV star and sees his heroics as nothing more than a failed celebrity clamoring for attention.

J. Jonah Jameson Sees Spider-Man As A Fame-Chasing Celebrity

And He Has Every Reason To Think So

For those who may have missed it, crimefighting was not the first thing Peter Parker turned to after being bitten by a radioactive spider. In his debut in Amazing Fantasy (1962) #15, Peter brings his Spider-Man persona, costume and all, as a late-night TV act. While Peter encounters the robber who will eventually murder his Uncle Ben after his very first show, "The Spiderman!" has around two weeks to a month of being a national sensation before the burglar he let go runs into Uncle Ben, and Spider-Man's career trajectory is changed forever.

The explanation that J. Jonah Jameson never forgot Spider-Man's short-lived burst of celebrity makes so much sense that I'm honestly surprised we haven't seen it show up in more Spider-Man lore. Of course a savvy journalist wouldn't just forget the blue-and-red striped acrobat who briefly took the world by storm a few months ago; of course Jonah would be able to connect Spider-Man's sudden disappearance from television with his equally-as-sudden media blitz as a superhero. To Jonah, it makes perfect sense that these are the actions of a desperate celebrity trying to cling to relevance in any way he can.

An Important Detail Of Spider-Man's Origins Has Been Lost

The Films Gloss Over This Crucial Element of Understanding Jonah Jameson

But who re Spider-Man's origin as a TV celebrity these days? Sam Raimi's film trilogy covered Spider-Man's test run as a wrestler, sure, but made the wrestling match into his short-lived celebrity stint. The MCU has glossed over this element of Spider-Man's origin entirely, instead shaping the character into something of a mini Tony Stark. Audiences are left with the grumpy, curmudgeonly Jonah, now immortalized through J.K. Simmons' picture-perfect take on the role, but lose out on the sharp and canny journalistic instincts that explain why he's the head of the Daily Bugle to begin with.

And that's a shame, because in my opinion, J. Jonah Jameson has the potential to be a delightful wild card amongst Spider-Man's allies. Ultimate Spider-Man (2024) does an excellent job of showing Jonah's journalistic chops by pairing him with Ben Parker and having the two of them slowly untangle The Maker's thread of lies and deceit. This version of Jonah is still abrasive, but you get more of a sense of the mind behind the gruff exterior - showing Jonah as a tough journalist who puts up an abrasive front to throw people off and get to the bottom of the story.

This is all to say that Marvel really needs to throw J. Jonah Jameson a bone. Finding this key buried in a forty-year-old comic really felt to me like finding the hidden key to Jonah's character, making him feel complete and contextualizing his actions in a way that contemporary comics really haven't bothered to try. Jonah may largely exist these days for comic relief, but he has the potential to be so much more - if more people saw that he has a real reason for considering Spider-Man to be such a menace.