Work Text:
The Daily Bugle: New York’s Finest Newspaper.
Founded in 1897, it has published one paper a day, every day since. Those crooks at The Globe had nothing on the Bugle. Bushkin could kiss his ass.
“Sensationalist! Can you believe it?” John Jonah Jameson Jr barked, slamming a hand on his shiny, new desk with a bang. The scrap of a boy in front of him jumped.
“W-What?” he squeaked.
Jameson’s eyes narrowed. Surely hiring this kid violated half a dozen labour laws? What was his name? It doesn’t matter; he wasn’t going to be sticking around for long.
“Why are you here, boy?”
“I-Um, I was sent to show you the manuscript for tomorrow morning's paper.” The rookie nervously shifted on his feet, fumbling with a stack of wrinkled paper. He shuffled forward, thrusting the papers on the desk, his gaze averted before quickly stepping back.
Jameson rolled his eyes and skimmed through the papers in front of him.
After a few long, quiet moments, the boy finally piped up. “Do you- Erm. Do you like them?” Wringing his hands, his black sneaker tapping on the wooden floor, he wiped a strand of his blond hair out of his eyes.
Jameson stared.
“Come here, boy.” His voice was deceptively calm.
Tentatively, the kid stepped closer.
Jameson rammed a finger into the ‘front page’. “What do you call this?” he asked.
The boy’s eyebrows furrowed. “The front page…” he said slowly.
Jameson lifted the manuscript and gave it a shake. The rattle of paper echoed between them.
“This!” Another jab, “Because from where I’m sat, it looks like nothing more than a smudge in the sky.” His voice was gradually increasing in volume, “I asked for a picture of Spider-Man. Do you seriously expect me to print this on my front page, boy?”
The boy’s brown eyes widened, but his lips pressed thin. “It’s hard to take a picture of the guy when he’s swinging seventy miles per hour. And I’m not ‘boy’.” He added, I’m-”
“Fired!” Jameson shouted. “Get out and get me some good pictures of Spider-Man. And take this trash out with you!”
The boy dashed out in a flurry of nerves, papers fluttering behind him.
The first few months after Spider-Man’s appearance had the media in a frenzy.
Initially, the ‘hero’ didn’t do much heroing. He swung across the city and sauntered on television like a show monkey. Jameson didn’t have much of a problem with that. He was young and stupid. Everyone wanted their five minutes of fame.
Then the man stopped flaunting himself in the media entirely. Suddenly, the only photos you could get of Spider-Man were red and blue blurs shot on some pedestrian’s phone as he swung through the air. That gunk he shot out of his wrists wasn’t just a party trick anymore—it was a weapon. Used to capture and restrain the city's supposed criminals and lowlifes. He abused his powers. Just last night, he stopped a truck with his bare hands.
It was all anyone was ever talking about, even at the Bugle.
“How do you think he does it?” His secretary -Elizabeth- asked her friend conspiratorially.
Jameson had recently given her the job after her mother had fallen ill. She was competent, more than her mother at least. Not even eighteen, yet already sharper than half the newsroom. He’d known her since she was a child.
“It doesn’t matter how he does it.” Jameson cut in before she could reply, “Something goes wrong and BAM he’s on the scene! There’s something fishy about him. Why else do you think he wears a mask?”
Elizabeth’s brows shot up. Good. At least she had the sense to be flustered when caught gossiping by her boss. They had a paper to print.
“He might not want the fame… sir.”
He scoffed, “If he didn’t want the fame, he wouldn’t have paraded himself around on television. Then all of a sudden, he quits. Hides in the shadows, beating men up in the streets in a mask. No better than any other street thug. He’s a violent, masked vigilante, a criminal!”
“The Avengers do the same, and no one criticises them. I think Spider-Man gets a bad reputation.”
“The Avengers are a sanctioned government organisation. Spider-Man is a menace in a mask!” Jameson ranted, red-faced. Elizabeth dodged the spittle that flew out of his mouth.
She looked ready to argue back in defence of Spider-Man, but her friend gently tugged on her arm.
“Come on, Betty,” she said, giving her a meaningful look, as if Jameson wasn’t right there.
“Someone get me a good photo of Spider-Man!” He demanded, addressing the rest of the room. “I’ll show the world exactly what he is.”
Exactly one week, and several—progressively longer and more animated—rants about Spider-Man later, a boy walked into Jameson’s office. Jameson leaned back in his chair, taking a deep breath of his cigar. He squinted at the boy through the haze of smoke billowing between them, sizing him up.
Scrawny, awkward, no more than sixteen. Not so different from the boy who fancied himself a photographer, a few weeks ago. He worried his collar, as if he wasn’t used to wearing ties. Judging by the way it was tangled around his neck, he wasn’t. He had a mess of wavy brown hair and a camera slung around his neck.
The boy opened his mouth—probably to stutter out some nonsense—So Jameson gave him some encouragement.
“Get on with it, boy.” He said, helpfully.
“It’s Parker. Uh, Peter. Peter Parker, sir.”
“You lost, Parker? Why are you here?”
“No. I-I heard you wanted some photos of Spider-Man?”
“Funny, I heard that as well. Now get out.”
The kid didn’t budge. Jameson considered phoning one of the local schools to fetch one of their missing pupils.
He took a firm step forward, holding out some photos.
Jameson rifled through them; close-up shots taken from impossible angles of Spider-Man. Spider-Man leaping through the air, Spider-Man scaling a building, Spider-Man webbing up a supposed criminal.
“You know this man’s name?” He asked, holding up the last photo. “He got assaulted by Spider-Man. This picture is proof. I should interview him.”
“I’m pretty sure he’s locked up.” Parker interrupted. Jameson’s moustache twitched. (He’d just got it trimmed—too short.) He hated being interrupted. He hated everything today.
“Betty told me you needed a photographer, so…” he added hesitantly.
“You’re a friend of Elizabeth’s?” Jameson ground his cigar in an overstuffed ashtray. That girl was everywhere and in everyone's business. It was why her hair curled like that. He could see her now, through the window, peeking shamelessly over her spotless desk, her big eyes eagerly watching the scene unfold.
“Are you even old enough to work?” he asked scrutinisingly.
“Yes.” Though it sounded more like a question than a statement.
“These are terrible. I’ll give you fifty.”
Parker perked up, leaning forward, like a stray puppy being offered scraps, “Each?”
Jameson laughed loudly. “For all three. Now, get out of my sight.”
“That sounds kinda low,” he frowned.
“A hundred. For the three. Standard rate for all freelancers. Come back next week. Don’t you dare start selling anywhere else, especially the Globe.”
Parker sauntered out, flashing a grin and triumphant double thumbs up at Elizabeth on the way.
The door swung open with a bang, causing Jameson to jump.
“You trying to give me a heart attack?” he spluttered, choking on his cigar.
Robbie Robertson, City, stormed in, slamming a newspaper on the desk between them in complete disregard for all the precariously stacked papers.
“How does he do it?” he demanded, pointing at the front cover.
“Spider-Man?”
“No.” He stabbed a finger at the credits. “Peter Parker. How on earth could he possibly get that shot?”
It was yesterday's cover—a photo of Spider-Man, midair during a backflip. The sun was at its pinnacle, blocked out by the menace’s red and blue suit, framing him in a halo of light.
Jameson frowned, he paid for pictures of Spider-Man, not blasted Monets.
“He took it with a camera. Like the rest of us.”
Jameson dismissed him with a wave of his hand. He went back to searching his phonebook for his barber's number. His moustache was starting to tickle his nose.
Robbie leaned forward. “I checked out where this photo was taken, only a couple of blocks from here. To get that exact angle, Parker would have to be hanging off the side of the building. Five stories up.”
“You’re saying the pictures are faked.”
He frowned, “Parker wouldn’t—I mean… How did he even know Spider-Man would be there? You’re telling me he was casually hanging five stories off a building and Spider-Man just happened to swing by?”
Jameson paused, finally looking up, “If they aren’t faked, I don’t give a damn. Now, get out.”
He sighed, folded the paper and left, but not before cranking open a window.
“It’s a wonder you haven’t suffocated on all the smoke in here,” he muttered. “And do you have to turn the city against Spider-Man?”
Jameson simply pointed his cigar towards the door.
The man was a bloody mother hen.
Jameson was standing by the window of his office. Marla was constantly on his ass about sitting in his own cigar fumes, so he blew the smoke out the open window.
It was a bright afternoon, plenty of people out and plenty of news to report. Not that the news slept anyway. The creak of the door opening caught Jameson’s attention.
Parker walked in, a slightly worn camera hanging around his neck and a bundle of pictures in his hands. His hair was a tangled mess. The boy still hadn’t learnt how to groom himself properly. He placed the brown envelope on the desk, next to the several coffee rings which had accumulated over the better part of a year. Jonah grunted in acknowledgement, turning back to the street and taking another long puff of his cigar. A clear dismissal to anyone with eyes.
“Uh, sir?”
He sighed, turning around, obviously not clear enough for Parker.
“Well, I was wondering…”
The boy always took a decade to get to the point. Jonah busied himself with the photos, cigar dangling between his teeth.
Spider-Man, Spider-Man, Spider-Man getting punched in the face. He placed that one to the side, smirking internally at Parker’s grimace.
“… pay rise…”
Jonah’s gaze snapped up.
“What?” he barked.
“A pay rise. And maybe a job?” Parker asked slowly, as if trying to satiate a wild animal. Jonah resented that. “I’ve been freelancing for the Bugle for almost a year—” Jonah also resented the obvious spelt out for him.
Jameson went back to the photos, “I’ll give you a fifty-dollar bonus if you can get another close-up of the menace getting punched like that—" He paused. Looking down at the last photo in his hands.
“Y’know, smoking those things is bad for you.”
It was a selfie. Of Spider-Man. The menace himself leering into the lens.
“Parker!” he snapped, “What is this?”
Parker’s eyes were wide. He looked like a deer caught in headlights.
“T-that’s-uh, not for you. Whoops! How did that get there?” he laughed nervously, snatching the photo out of Jameson’s hands, shoving it in his bag.
Jameson simply raised a brow.
“You know what? Forget the job. Freelancing is fine! I’m fine.”
Parker scuttled out of the office. “I’m taking the bonus though!” he called. The door screeched shut behind him. It needed to be oiled, Jameson noted.
Jameson didn’t care what his employees did in their free time. He should’ve known Parker would get himself mixed up with Spider-Man after chasing him around the city for the better part of a year. Judgment obviously wasn’t one of his strong points, hanging off of buildings like that. Taking impossible shots. But the menace was a danger. No one knew who was under that mask.
For someone so desperate to get a job, Parker showed an impressively poor work ethic.
“You’re fired, Parker!” he spat.
Peter gave Betty a meaningful look, which Jameson did not appreciate, and slapped a flash drive into his hand.
Jameson glared at his general discomposure.
The kid was breathless, flushed, with windswept hair. Barely twenty and still a complete disaster—more than usual, at least. His hair was always a mess.
“The shocker knocked out all the traffic lights, so there were some delays,” Parker explained, forgetting he had no place behind the wheel if he cared at all about public safety. He was bracing himself on Elizabeth’s desk. She tried, in vain, to swat his hand off with a ruler.
Jameson raised an eyebrow, "How did you take these?”
Parker wrinkled his nose in confusion, “With my camera?” He held up the camera, which hung around his neck by its cracked, leather straps—like that proved anything.
Jameson looked back at his screen. It was Spider-Man trading blows with the Shocker on Manhattan Bridge. The picture was taken slightly above. The shot was perfectly timed to capture the exact second Spider-Man crashed into someone’s car. He was surrounded by destruction. The bridge was deserted of civilians and press alike.
Parker hovered at his elbow like a fruit fly, impossible to swat away. “Do you have to use that one? There’s, like, twenty more where he’s winning.”
“This paper needs a new angle,” Jameson decided, “This picture shows Spider-Man single-handedly destroying private property.”
“That wasn’t Spider-Man. I don’t think the guy asked to be thrown around like a bowling ball. It hurts.”
Jameson rounded on Peter, “And how would you know that?”
“Because…” his face went scarlet, “I was there—um—on the bridge! I was taking the photo, obviously, and yeesh. It looked and sounded painful, you know?”
The boy was hiding something.
“Your shirt’s inside out,” Jameson grunted.
“Oh, I was half asleep this morning.” He laughed nervously.
It was half past three in the afternoon.
“Coffee’s over there. No more than one cup.” Jameson waved him off.
“Elizabeth, find the owner of this car. I want to give him an interview!”
“Betty, Jameson. Only my mother calls me Elizabeth.” She replied, exasperated.
Chewing a cigar (he was trying to quit), he turned back to the computer, inspecting the shots closer. The bridge was deserted, except for Spider-Man and the Shocker. How could puny Peter Parker get close enough to take these?
It was late November; the sky had darkened into a muddy watercolour of blues and greys, and clouds hung low, not that any stars could compete with the light pollution in New York City anyway. The cold was biting, and Jameson had forgotten his coat in his office and had to turn back. He had already stayed later than usual.
The office was in pandemonium after Spider-Man pulled his stunt with that unhinged mercenary he had gotten mixed up with, Deadpool. Like calls to like. The entire city knew, and hated, Deadpool, and—with a little encouragement from the Bugle—public opinion on Spider-Man was also starting to sway. If he had his way, the masked menace and his sidekick would be outlawed and chased off the streets by any means necessary. The city needed someone strong enough to get the job done. Someone handsome. Charismatic.
He should run for mayor.
Finishing the last of his cigar—he’d been strong-armed into limiting his smoking down to office hours, where Marla couldn’t confiscate them. She was on his case—something about blood pressure, anger and stress leading to heart attacks. His heart was perfectly fine, thank you very much. Shoving his cigar into the (slightly less) overfilled ashtray, he began to shrug on his coat-
The window exploded. Glass flew through the office, twinkling in the low light, like fresh snow.
There. Tangled in the blinds on the ground. A snarl of red and blue.
It tumbled into the office, ripping the blinds off the wall. A flurry of noise and movement.
Jameson stood. Slack-jawed. Lost for words. His cigar fell out of his mouth.
Thankfully, he was an excellent journalist, so not for long.
“You’re going to pay for the damages you’ve just done to my office.” He bellowed, outraged.
The thing—oh, it was a man. At least, Jameson thought. New York seemed to attract all sorts of oddities. Giant insects, aliens, talking animals, talking trees, talking sand, talking rocks… huh.
“You’re going to have to give me a raise first.” Spider-Man groaned, getting on his feet.
“Spider-Man?”
“Hey Jameson, my dawg? Was just swinging by when I came across the Bugle. I was like, hey, I should pay my ol’ buddy (Well, not buddy.) Jameson, a visit, an—"
He cut himself off to look at an imaginary watch on his wrist, “It’s kinda late, what’re you still doing here? Do you get paid overtime? Do you pay yourself overtime—”
“Do you get paid by the word?” Jameson snapped, cigar forgotten by his feet.
Maybe Marla wasn’t so wrong about the blood pressure thing.
“What are you doing here, Spider-Freak? Come to get revenge? I’ll have you know, freedom of speech is my First Amendment right!”
Spider-Man slapped Jameson on the back, making him stumble, the defeated blinds dangling limply off him like a shredded cape. “You get it! People’re always telling me that. ‘I’ll web your mouth shut.’” He paused, “Actually, I usually say that…” He slurred his words slightly.
The menace must’ve hit his head. Hard. But Jameson wasn’t anything if not adaptable.
“Is that why you decided to blow up a residential building?”
He clicked on a voice recorder. Spider-Man’s head immediately snapped to his left hand, still holding onto the recorder, in his pocket, his eye lenses narrowing. Jameson froze. His heart pounded.
After a tense moment, Spider-Man scratched his head, “What was the question again? My head's all… like,” he waved his hands around his head, making a sound effect to match.
“You bombed a building!” Jameson barked.
“For the record,” Spider-Man pointed vaguely in Jameson’s direction, “That was Deadpool. Not me.”
“You admit to consorting with known criminals and mass murderers!”
“…Just the one.”
This was it. The entire world would be forced to admit. The Amazing Spider-Man was nothing more than a masked menace.
“In my defence-”
“Go on!” Jameson urged with barely restrained delight.
“He has, like, huge muscles.” Spider-Man gestured, then gestured again, as if the first attempt hadn’t conveyed the sheer magnitude of muscle. “It’s actually quite distracting, you know…”
Jameson deflated. This wasn’t that type of newspaper.
He was starting to get a headache, and the menace was still talking.
With a sigh, he clicked off the tape recorder. Hopefully, there was something incriminating enough for tomorrow's paper in there somewhere. There was no way in hell he was subjecting himself to Spider-Pest’s ramblings a second time. He’d get Betty to sift through it.
He reached for a camera. Parker was slacking. What did he pay him for again? And turned to snap a shot of the Wall-Crawler-
Who had just swung out the window.
Between Team Red and being banished to the couch, thanks to a grouchy Marla, Jameson had every reason to wake up in a bad mood. So, when he rolled off the couch and discovered he’d slept through Spider-Man cementing himself as an enemy of the state, he already knew.
Today would be full of yelling.
“Elizabeth-”
“Betty.” She corrected.
“Betty. Sort through this. Give me something front page worthy.”
She took the recorder with a raised eyebrow.
Someone smacked him on the back, making him jump. It was Robbie. “Do you have the number of that spokesperson for—” he grimaced. “You look terrible, boss. What happened?”
‘Spider-Man’ was all the explanation he gave.
Peter walked in, late once again. He looked terrible.
“He looks worse than you,” Robbie said, before making a quick beeline out of there. He had worked with Jameson long enough to know when the man was about to explode, and he did not want to be caught in the crossfire.
Meanwhile, Jameson busied himself with a strong cup of coffee and a cigar (he deserved one after this mess). Occasionally, catching snippets of the conversation through his open office door while he sorted through his papers.
“Pete, you have got to hear this.” She dragged a sluggish Peter to her desk, where she and a couple of others were ‘analysing’ the tape recorder Jameson gave her. “Wait, wait, wait. Replay that part—No, the bit where he starts reciting poetry.”
“That was supposed to be a poem?” One of the new interns asked. They had all flocked to Betty’s desk to witness the spectacle that is Spider-Man.
“You know,” Peter said weakly, “I think Spider-Man deserves his privacy. He obviously wasn’t in the right mind—”
“Peter—No! This is golden. You can’t take this away from me—hey!” Betty cried out.
There was a scuffle, a crash, and suddenly the tape recorder blared on full volume.
“—Please don’t explode,
You bring me snacks.
You wear red, you copied me.
I can’t remember why I was mad,
Which is suspicious.
You’re kinda hot,
and it’s nice you can’t die—”
Jameson thudded his head on his battered desk. He’d already endured this once.
“Parke-”
Before he’d even finished, a flushed Peter Parker burst into Jameson’s office, opening his mouth to speak—
“Shut the door.”
Both of them breathed easier when the door muffled the tape recorder. Well… mostly.
“Y’know Black Cat told me once…”
“Hey,” Peter frowned, picking up this morning’s issue, “Spider-Man didn’t crash that helicopter. I-He doesn’t even know how to fly one. That was all Deadpool! This is fake news.”
Jameson felt his heart stutter.
Fake news. The Daily Bugle! How dare he?
Jameson shot to his feet, chair toppling over.
Hold on, ‘I’?
“PARKE—"
He coughed. The world tilted. He desperately tried to suck in air. A pathetic wheeze whistled in his ears. A pressure, like a fist, clenched around his heart.
He collapsed.
His vision blackened, darkness creeping in like an incoming tide.
Jameson slept with images of Spider-Man, Peter Parker and pigeons swimming around his mind. Spider-Man and Peter Parker stood over him, mockingly. The menace throwing around irreverent quips, and Parker making cheeky witticisms.
Eventually, the hazy images of Parker and Spider-Man morphed into one. Peter Parker, wearing the Spider-Man suit laughing over him. His face was in perfect clarity. The vision warped.
He woke up with a gasp.
An incessant beeping assaulted his ears. A thin blanket scratched his chin. The distinctive odour of disinfectant and misery lingered around his nostrils.
Spider-Man was Peter Parker.
Peter Parker—his photographer—was Spider-Man.
The thought slapped his face with awful, irrefutable clarity.
He accused the Bugle of printing fake news.
The beeping quickened.
A nurse burst in, frantically urging him to ‘calm down’ and ‘take deep breaths’.
Words like ‘heart attack’ and ‘stress’ echoed in his ears.
When he finally caught his breath, he forced out one name.
“-ker, I need Parker.
Robbie and Marla sat beside his bed, drinking coffee. They’d offered Jameson decaf. He—colourfully—told them not to bother—right up until a nurse came in to physically restrain him.
Now, they sat in a calm, slightly strained silence.
“Where’s Parker?”
Robbie sighed, his exasperation deepening the fine lines on his face. “You’ve already worked yourself into one Parker-induced heart attack. Want to give it another go? The doctor specifically said to keep your stress down. That means no coffee, no Bugle, no Parker.”
Jameson forced himself upright, “No Bugle? You have no right, Robbie—”
“It wasn’t him; it was me.”
“Marla?”
Marla clasped Jameson’s cold hands in her own warm ones. “You almost lost your life, Jonah. You need to take a break.”
“My life?” Jameson scoffed, “The Bugle is my life. You’re taking it away from me.”
“It won’t be forever, Jonah. Just a little while.”
“And how long is ‘a little while’?”
“Just until you get better.”
“And when is that!”
Marla, “I’m going to ask the nurse about that low-sodium meal plan.”
Robbie followed after her, “Get some rest, Jonah, I’ll hold up fort until you get back.”
Three days later, Jameson was still in the hospital.
Three days of low-sodium meals, backless hospital gowns, and involuntary bedrest. No one said anything outright, but he suspected Marla had something to do with his longer-than-necessary stay.
On an unrelated note, he almost had another heart attack after seeing the garbage they printed the first day after his enforced exile. After that, he wasn’t allowed to read the Bugle. Betty visited him on the second day, but even she refused to speak about the paper. Or Parker. Her flowers and card sat by the window.
Peter Parker was Spider-Man.
It took three days to let that properly sink in.
He’d been made a fool.
He clenched his fists. Jameson was paying the boy a premium—since he was sixteen, fumbling with a camera, when the composition sucked, and the framing was questionable. All for exclusives of the so-called ‘impossible to catch’ Amazing Spider-Man. All along, he’d been paying Parker to take glorified selfies.
He built the kid up from nothing. Gave him his start as a photographer. Even when he was a pain in the neck, he put up with the excuses, the constant lateness, the scruffiness. In fact, despite it all, Jameson respected Parker.
The last honest guy in town.
Always been straight with him.
That’s what he always told himself every time Parker disappeared or showed up late, bruised and breathless. His respect bought the kid's trust. His trust allowed Spider-Man to profit from his vigilantism.
It was all a lie. He wondered if Parker was laughing at them all for being so blind.
Not long after that, Jameson was discharged.
He expected his first step into the Bugle to be like a breath of fresh air. A return to the ordinary, the comfortable, familiar and old. The newsroom never changed. Phones shrieked, voices collided. Frantic footsteps pounded past, darting like sparks. It smelled like fresh, cheap coffee and sensationalism.
Ink-stained hands pat him on the shoulder, welcoming him back. Congratulating his speedy recovery, telling him they accidentally double-booked page six, again.
He finally sat back down in his old chair, in front of today’s manuscript. He leaned forward; the chair wobbled. It was probably from when he tipped it over during his heart attack. Right after he figured out Peter was Spider-Man.
Spider-Man.
There was a chip in the corner of his desk where Spider-Man burst in through his window, weeks ago. Thankfully, someone—probably Betty—got around to fixing the window. He should deduct it from Parker’s pay.
Spider-Man stared at him on the front page. He was fighting the Rhino. The photo showed him crashing through a residential building in the Upper East Side, like a bowling ball. Peter Parker’s name credited below, in bold. He’d called it news. “This paper needs a new angle.” Now he knew exactly whose pain the Daily Bugle benefited from. Who Jonah was profiting from. Who he was paying for these photographs.
He waited for the familiar rage. Red-hot, the type that burns.
All he felt was regret. It made him feel sick.
He hated the menace. He was a danger, always had been. He hated Parker’s betrayal.
“Betty!”
She immediately burst into his office, when usually she would have taken her time. It reminded Jameson of her first few months at the Bugle.
“Yes, Sir?”
“Take this away. This paper needs something new. Something fresh.” He thrust the manuscript into her arms.
Betty’s eyebrows furrowed. “Something fresh?”
“Spider-Man is old news.” He barked, almost too quickly. His mouth deciding for him. It sounded strange on his lips. “What was that story about Fisk Tower? Run that instead.”
“Old news. Spider-Man?... Are you sure?” She repeated slowly.
“Is there an echo in here? Go!” He dismissed her.
His fingers itched for a cigar. His old ashtray had been smashed by Spider-Man, along with the window and desk. He hadn’t gotten around to buying a new one. He remembered all the times Peter nagged him to quit smoking over the years. Maybe he never would.
The Bugle was the same. J. Jonah Jameson wasn’t.
A week of Spider-Man-free papers later, rumours buzzed throughout the Bugle like wildfire. Despite their ‘discretion,’ Jameson knew what they were saying. Let them talk; he didn’t need to justify himself to anyone. If they foolishly wanted to believe his ‘brush with death’ had made him soft, they could. They didn’t know what he did. Others—more accurately—theorized that Jameson was holding a grudge against Peter for his ‘Parker-induced heart attack’.
Jameson was at his desk, pretending to work, when Parker burst in.
“Old news?” The door crashed against the wall and bounced back with a whine. He never did get around to oiling it.
Parker ploughed through the empty office. Ignoring Jonah’s barked “Busy.” He swiped at the desk, papers scattered, headlines tumbling to the ground.
“Not anymore.”
Jonah scowled at his blatant disrespect for other people’s property.
Parker slammed a brown envelope on the desk between them. “You’ve stopped buying pictures of Spider-Man. Why? And don’t give me that ‘old news’ crap. You haven’t printed a word about Spider-Man since you’ve gotten back. My check just bounced. I’ve got bills to pay, Jameson!”
“And I’ve got a paper to print!” Jameson could feel his own anger rising. He vaguely remembered the breathing exercises the nurses drilled into him at the hospital.
“Spider-Man made the Bugle!”
That did it.
Jameson jerked to his feet, wobbly chair crashing behind him. He leaned over the desk, pointing a finger in Peter’s face. “No. I made Spider-Man. I made you infamous.”
He scoffed, “I could’ve gone anywhere with those photos. I don’t have to stick with you.”
“Why don’t you? Oh, I know! Other papers might ask too many questions, won’t they? Harder to keep your little secret under wraps.”
Jameson watched the blood drain from Peter’s face smugly.
“You haven’t been replaced by a Skrull… have you?” He asked weakly.
Jonah’s voice dropped to a venomous growl, “Get out of my office. Spider-Man.” He spat.
The New Year came and went. Both Robbie and Betty barged into Jameson’s office several times, first asking, then demanding, that he rehire Peter.
“Funny—I don’t remember even hiring him. He was supposed to be a freelancer.”
“He was more than that, and you know it!” Betty snapped before storming out, heels rapping against the wooden tiles. Afterwards, she stopped speaking to him.
His desk felt bare without her ridiculous pastel notes nagging him with their ridiculous reminders: ‘drink two litres of water’, ‘take your meds’. It was a waste of paper. Yet somehow, it threw him off his game. He hated change.
A few days later, Robbie tried his luck. “Peter and Spider-Man sold half of our papers from those shots.” He pressed insistently.
“You mean to tell me there’s nothing else in the entire city worth printing besides Spider-Man?”
“The entire country is raving about Spider-Man’s defeat of that serial killer, Paper Doll. Betty and I have been chasing those murders for weeks.”
“Run a special edition on the mayor’s race. Tell Brock to give me some shots of Hollister. His bad side this time.”
The Bugle was collapsing. For the first time in more than half a decade, they couldn’t sell out.
On the plus side, Jameson found he could yell much longer without a cigar clenched in his teeth.
He was interrupted from his work by a knock at his door. He’d almost forgotten that was a thing.
At his grunt, a young girl edged into the office, “Betty asked me to give you this. It’s from your wife.”
Jameson snatched the Post-it note, waiting for the door to slam shut before he read it.
He scowled at Betty’s curly handwriting. ‘Cardiogram 4pm tomorrow. DON’T FORGET.’ Sticking it on his desk, anyway, muttering about the clutter. Still, it felt a little less empty.
Jameson turned to the street outside his window. Just in time to see Spider-Man swing past.
His heart plummeted. His mood curdled. He hadn’t seen Peter Parker since the last time he fired him, but Spider-Man’s suit was becoming increasingly frayed. It was held together by patches and crooked stitches. The few scraps of original fabric stained and dulled.
No other paper credited Peter Parker, and Jameson hadn’t exposed his identity. They were locked in a stalemate.
February winds gnawed at Jameson’s cheeks. Everyone at the Bugle clustered around mugs of hot coffee, bundled in wool. They’d recently had to cut down on the heating budget. People’s words solidified before them, condensation dancing in the air. The once electric energy declined into a stagnant hum. The Daily Bugle was going into hibernation.
Jameson tried to focus on his work half-heartedly. He barely noticed the red-cheeked man marching into the newsroom, wearing nothing but a threadbare sweater, fraying scarf and faded jeans. Snow settled on his shoulders and in his messy brown curls.
It was Betty’s delighted cry that caught his attention, “Peter!” It cracked through the chill, thawing Jameson’s mind. Peter?
While they hugged and quickly caught up, Jameson gave up the pretence of pretending to work.
“You don’t work here.” He snapped.
Peter gave Betty a lingering look before striding into Jameson’s office. He bought a new camera, the soft leather hung around his neck.
He only spoke when the door was firmly shut. “Then give me a job here.”
He could see Betty’s wide, hopeful eyes peeking over her neat desk, soaking in the spectacle before her through the window.
Jameson barked out a laugh. The chair wobbling beneath him. It was short, sharp, and bitter. “You or Spider-Man?”
Peter ran a hand down his face and settled in a chair. It was a familiar sight. “Look. I need a job. You need Spider-Man, whether you’ll admit it or not. It’s been two months, and the Bugle’s almost as broke as me. So, why haven’t you pasted my identity all over your front covers yet?”
Jameson’s jaw ticked. He resented having his failure stated so plainly.
The pause hung flat. Neither cold nor charged.
Peter sighed, hauling himself up.
Jameson exhaled through his nose. “Fine. Start today. No excuses for any missed deadlines, now I know how you take your shot.”
The man paused mid-step. Spinning around with a comical expression of surprise. “What?”
“And don’t expect me to start coddling your friend Spider-Man.”
“Triple J! Oh, I could hug you right now!” He jumped to his feet, grinning. “I thought that would be a lot harder. You sure you’re not a Skrull?” Jameson’s glower cut him short, and he added quickly, “I knew you cared deep down!”
“Get out before I fire you again, Parker.”
He clasped the door.
“Oh, and Parker.”
“Yeah?”
“Here’s a bonus. Do us all a favour and buy a new suit.”
Peter took the slip with a two-fingered salute before sauntering out of Jameson’s office. The gesture tugged at Jameson’s memory—the young boy on his first day walking out as if the world and everything on it belonged to him. And also, of Spider-Man, who he had seen flash that exact brazen salute a hundred times since.