Marvel Classic Novels--Spider-Man, page 57
So Jameson had begun writing editorials warning people about the menace of Spider-Man. He couldn’t risk letting the wall-crawler trick the public into thinking he was a hero. Unfortunately, his efforts had backfired; the bad press had made him persona non grata in show business, leaving him free to take up the crimefighting gig full-time. Jameson still wondered if Spider-Man would’ve gotten it out of his system and gone back to show business if he himself hadn’t scuttled the webhead’s career. But if he was responsible for that, it just made it all the more imperative that he be the one to fix it.
“He’s out for glory, Robbie,” Jameson went on. “And he doesn’t care how many laws or how much property gets smashed in the process. He thinks he’s above the law, above all of us crawling around down here while he swings by overhead and jeers at us. He’s got nothing to keep him in check, so why shouldn’t he cross the line?”
“Why doesn’t Captain America, or Thor, or Reed Richards?” Robertson asked. “The heroes could’ve conquered this planet a thousand times over if they’d wanted to, and nobody could’ve stopped them. But they don’t, because they believe their powers are meant for good.”
Jameson scoffed. “Nobody’s a hero, Robbie. Heroes are just bullies and egotists with good PR. We’ve all got our dark sides, our selfishness and anger and hate.”
“Of course, but we keep it in check.”
“Society keeps us in check. We don’t do the nasty things we all want to do because there are people watching. Because we’ll get punished for it— go to jail, get fired, lose our social standing, get looked at with contempt or disgust by other people. It’s our fear of not getting away with it that keeps us under control.”
He shook his head, thinking of his father the war hero and the unheroic things he did out of the limelight—the drinking, the cheating, the beatings. “But if nobody can see us, if we think we can get away with it, we’ll do anything. For someone who hides behind a mask . . . someone the police can’t identify, someone whose own friends and family probably don’t know what he does . . . there are no consequences to face. Nothing to keep him in check. And the longer he can get away with it, the more he likes it, and the farther he’ll go.”
There had been a time, Jameson recalled, when he had been jealous of Spider-Man. The man had actually saved the life of Jameson’s own astronaut son, John, despite the damage Jameson himself had done to his career. Though JJJ had publicly condemned the wall -crawler, blaming him for sabotaging John’s spaceflight in the first place rather than give the impression that he’d been wrong about his warnings, on some level he’d been grateful. And for a while, he’d secretly let himself become convinced that Spider-Man was a hero after all, a better man than Jameson because he was willing to risk his life to save others while Jameson was only interested in profit and success.
But that hadn’t lasted. Jameson had striven to improve himself, to prove he wasn’t less of a mensch than the wall-crawler. He’d become a crusader for civil rights and public safety. He’d funded charities of all sorts. He’d brought Robbie, the best, most honest newspaperman around, on board to raise the Bugle’s respectability. He’d outgrown his early attempts to send superpowered freaks or Spider-Slayer robots after the webhead, realizing that by doing so he only let himself be dragged down to the arachnid’s level.
And he’d realized something. For all the good he did, he was still doing it in the name of profit, even if it was just the personal profit of feeling better about himself, about how others thought of him. And that led him to realize something else, too: Spider-Man was no better than he was. Spider-Man had started out as a money-grubber, too. And if J. Jonah Jameson was still a self-serving money-grubber at heart despite all the charitable ventures and heroic crusades he’d undertaken for this city, then Spider-Man must be, too. The only difference was that Jameson showed his face. His own self-interest kept him on the straight and narrow, because he knew the consequences he’d face if he strayed.
He voiced his thoughts to Robbie. “Everyone knows who the Fantastic Four are. A lot of the Avengers don’t have secret identities, and the government knows who the rest are. People like that, people who have the courage to step forward and accept accountability for their actions, can be trusted—at least as far as we can watch them.
“But a superpowered loner practicing vigilante justice in a fright mask? That’s a time bomb waiting to go off, Robbie. He doesn’t have anything to keep him in check.” And without it, Jameson knew that sooner or later Spider-Man would do . . . well, exactly what Jameson himself would do if he thought he could get away with it. Do what he wanted, take what he wanted, and beat down anyone who stood in his way.
Jameson would never tell Robbie—would never tell anyone—but that was the real reason he hated and feared Spider-Man: because he understood him. Because he knew that, deep down, they were the same.
Heaven help them both.
NINE
WHERE ARE YOU COMIN’ FROM?
“SO you haven’t spoken to Mary Jane since the fight?”
Aunt May’s voice was sympathetic and unjudging, yet Peter could hear the regret in it, resonating with his own. He leaned back from her kitchen table, slumping in the chair. “No. But we’re both so busy lately, we go for long stretches without talking anyway. It’s no big deal.”
She gave him a look over her shoulder, not breaking stride as she puttered deliberately about the kitchen. She was baking brownies for a neighborhood bake sale, raising money for research to help coma patients. She’d organized it as a way of trying to do something for Flash Thompson and Bobby Ribeiro. Peter often felt she was the real superhero in the family. “That’s the same way you said it was ‘no big deal’ when the bullies would harass you in high school. I knew better then, too.”
“Okay, so I’m not exactly happy about it. But she’ll get over it soon, I know it.”
“She will, eh?”
He felt himself blushing at her tone, but stood his ground. “Look, maybe I was a little short with her. But I’ve been under a lot of pressure lately. And she’s giving me mixed messages! First she’s happy about my new confidence, then she’s giving me the third degree about what I did or didn’t do—at a time when I really needed her support! And don’t I have the right to let my wife know how frustrated I am when she’s not around? It’s not like I was blaming her for it. And once she cools down a bit, she’ll see that.”
“Hm,” May said as she checked the status of the second batch of brownies in the oven; the first pan was cooling on the counter. ‘‘You know, Peter . . . in thirty-odd years of marriage, one thing I learned is the importance of letting your partner win their share of the arguments. Eventually you realize that you’re part of a team, and the harmony of the team is more important than standing your ground—even when you’re right.”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying.” Her serene gaze held on him, and after a few moments he realized that she was talking about him, not MJ. He sighed. “Okay. I’ll patch things up with her . . . later on. Give us both a chance to cool off.”
“Good for you, dear.”
“Hey, at least you agree I was right.”
She gave him her best innocent look. “Did I say that?”
‘‘Well, you—hey—well, do you?”
May came over to sit across from him. “Of course I do, dear. I also think Mary Jane is right.”
‘‘We can’t both be.”
‘‘Whyever not? Arguments where only one side’s right are the easy ones. You don’t see too many of those.”
He gave her a skeptical look. “In my work, I see them all the time.”
‘‘Well, I can’t speak to that. All I know is what I see around me. Whether it’s on the news or the talk shows or those . . . blob things like Mr. Jameson has.”
Peter chuckled. “I think you mean ‘blog.’”
She wrinkled her nose. “Hideous word. There’s no elegance to language anymore. Anyway, everywhere I look, I see people talking at each other instead of listening to each other. Shouting each other down, insisting they have to be right. When someone tries to express an alternative viewpoint, they aren’t given a fair hearing; they’re shouted down, drowned out, met with attempts to discredit them or demonize them—anything to avoid even acknowledging the point they’re making. Nobody even responds to the actual points they make anymore, because that would require thinking about them, and we can’t have that. They just go after the person and imply that the argument is discredited by association.” She shook her head. “Shocking, the lengths people will go to these days to avoid admitting that anyone else could have a point about anything. It’s considered a sign of weakness to give the other side any ground at all.
“That’s not how it works in a marriage, like I said, dear. And I don’t see why it should be any different elsewhere. People can’t live together in a community, can’t work together to get anything done, if they won’t let their guard down and have a little faith in each other. If they can’t work out their differences through compromise, look for the things they have in common and use those to solve the matters that set them apart.
“And you can see that everywhere you look. The world has become so uncivil. The leaders are too busy fighting with each other to find real solutions to any of its problems. It’s just not working, Peter. Because people are trying too hard to ‘win’—or at least to make it look like they’ve won—to actually solve anything. Trying too hard to avoid looking wrong to question whether there’s anything they could learn from other people. And the truth gets drowned out in the thunder of accusations.”
Peter was about to say she was overreacting, but she went on. “Ben and I always tried to teach you the importance of asking questions. And we hardly needed to, since you took to it so well. You had such a gift for recognizing what you didn’t know and applying your self to finding it out. You were never afraid to be wrong because you knew it was a condition you could change if you applied yourself.” She smiled. “I believe that’s what made you such a gifted science student—and such a good, tolerant man. Ben was very proud of both those things about you—and I still am.”
Peter lowered his head, humbled by her words. After several moments of silence, May rose from the table and squeezed Peter’s shoulder as she passed behind him. He spoke again after more moments’ thought. “I get what you’re saying, Aunt May. You’re right—a little self-doubt can be a healthy thing. I guess I did take out my frustration on MJ. I miss her, and I guess I resent her work a little for keeping her away from me, and I handled it badly. I guess she has to deal with the same thing when I spend my nights out catching crooks.”
“I’ve had to deal with it since you moved out for college,” May said softly.
“And just because she raised questions about the death of that man doesn’t mean she wasn’t supporting me. I . . .” He blinked repeatedly and swallowed. “I guess she was voicing questions I’ve been trying not to admit I was asking myself. Whether I did get too cocky, too careless. Whether it could’ve been my fault—partly—that it happened. That’s . . . tough to face.”
He felt her hand on his shoulder again. “I would never say it was your fault if you fail to prevent a death that someone else caused. The fault is theirs, of course. But even the best of us make mistakes that we need to face and learn from.”
After a moment, he shook his head, brow furrowing. “Maybe about that. Definitely about MJ,” he went on as her hands pulled away and she returned to her work. “But the one thing I’m still sure of is that Jameson’s behind all this. He wouldn’t be putting my spider-sense on high alert if he weren’t.”
‘‘You have to admit, dear, it’s hard to believe.”
“I know. I know. But I have to trust my instincts, right?” he asked, turning to face her.
She put her hand to her chin and thought about that for a moment. “Well, people do like to say that. But I have to wonder. I can’t help thinking of the people you’ve told me about in . . . well, your line of work . . . who’ve been driven by instinct above all. People like that man Kravinoff, the so-called Hunter. Or poor Dr. Connors when he becomes that Lizard.” She shuddered. “Or that awful black alien thing that calls itself Venom.”
She’d just listed three of his most fearsome, savage, and irrational enemies. Peter could hardly blame her for being afraid even to think about them, for they all scared the bejeebers out of him. And their animal ferocity, their insusceptibility to reason and compromise, had been a large part of what had made them all so deadly.
Peter rose and put a comforting hand on May’s shoulder. She smiled up at him, placing her hand upon it briefly, and went on. “I think instincts can be useful. But I also think that what separates us from the beasts—or from creatures like those—is that we can listen to our judgment as well as our instincts. We can recognize that an urge that might have made sense in a jungle millions of years ago might not be right for a world populated by civilized human beings.”
He stared at her. “But how could my spider-sense be wrong?” he asked—genuinely asked, rather than dismissing.
May gave him a wistful smile. “I have no idea, dear. I can’t even say it is wrong. But at least you’ve begun to ask the question. And that can’t be bad, can it?”
Peter turned away, slowly pacing the kitchen as he struggled with the idea. “You think about that while I tend to the brownies,” May said.
Has my spider-sense ever failed me this way before? He couldn’t recall it. False negatives were one thing. The arachnid senses he believed he relied upon—whether vibrational, ultraviolet, pheromonal, or whatever—could be interfered with by heavy rain or particulate clouds, just like any other sense. Sometimes they’d been dulled chemically, and he’d been left without them for a time. And there were beings that his danger sense just didn’t perceive as a threat, no matter the context—May because she was family, the Venom symbiote because it had been bonded to him long enough for his brain to learn to respond to it as a part of himself.
But false positives? As far as he could recall, everything he’d ever imagined to be a false positive, the result of stress or illness or jangled nerves, had eventually turned out to be a warning of a hidden danger he should have heeded. Still, he supposed it stood to reason that it could happen. It was his brain, not his sense organs, that judged whether a stimulus exceeded the danger threshold and warranted an aversion response. Venom wasn’t actually invisible to his subliminal senses, but just didn’t give the kind of input his brain would recognize as dangerous enough to warrant an alert. Stupid stubborn brain, should’ve learned by now after all the times Venom had nearly killed me. So surely it was possible in theory for his brain to overreact to input that wasn’t dangerous. He didn’t see how, but Aunt May was right: he had to admit the—
DANGER! The sudden burst of spider-sense tingle was almost overpowering. He reflexively jumped to the ceiling, away from the deadly threat he felt behind him, and whirled to see what it was.
Aunt May had been behind him, holding a carving knife.
In a second, he was on her. ‘‘Who are you? What have you done with my Aunt May?!” She gasped, letting the knife clatter to the ground. She looked utterly terrified. But he couldn’t let that fool him. He’d fallen for impostors before. And to think this one had almost convinced him to doubt what he knew to be true . . .
“Peter, please, it’s me!”
But his instincts told him differently. “Answer me! Who are you working for?!”
She gasped for breath. “Peter—please—think about it. Is that really— likely? Are you—willing to risk—hurting your own aunt—based only on an instinct? On your certainty—that it can’t—be wrong?”
His spider-sense was still screaming at him, but he looked into her eyes . . . saw the terror in the face of his aunt . . . because of him.
He let her go, backed away . . . He didn’t know what to think, what to do. She sank into a chair, trembling, reaching for her blood-pressure pills.
Looking at him with fear.
He ran. He didn’t know what else to do. If that was really May, then he hated himself for leaving her without making sure she was all right. But the way his instincts were screaming at him to attack her, he couldn’t take the risk.
What is happening to me? he shouted to himself as he changed into Spider-Man in a secluded spot. I need answers. I need there to be answers. He swung off toward Manhattan, toward Jameson. He didn’t know anymore if Jameson was really behind all this. But he prayed that somehow that was the right answer.
It would make everything so simple.
* * *
JAMESON had finally decided he could no longer endure just sitting around waiting for something to happen. As he declared to his wife over the phone, it was time for Jigsaw Jameson to come out of retirement.
“Who?” was her only reply.
“Didn’t I ever tell you? That’s what they used to call me back in my reporting days. Jigsaw Jameson. Could piece together any puzzle in record time.”
“Really,” Marla said dryly. “Then why did you need me to program the VCR?”
“I’m an important man now. I’ve learned to delegate. But not this time. This one’s personal. I’ve gotta get out there and track down Spider-Man myself. No one knows him like I do. I’m the only one who can recognize his stench behind this robot business and trail it to the source. The Bloodhound, they used to call me.”
