Spiderman 1 (31 page)

"How about if you say," Harry leaned forward, taking her
hand in his, "that you'll go out with me tomorrow night?"

And M. J. couldn't help but think how funny it was, the
way things turned out. She'd gone to the apartment to see
Peter ... happened to run into Harry ... and now here they
were, at dinner in this gorgeous restaurant, and ... and ...
and she was happy for the first time in ages. Yes, she felt
happy with Harry and, even more
...
she felt safe with him.

"You're on," she said.

Mrs. Iola was hurrying home, the fish from the Krause
Fish Market safely on ice in her bag, when the assailant

stepped away from a lamppost that he'd been leaning
against. Her eyes went wide and she took a step back as he pulled out a gun. "Give me the purse."

Intellectually she knew the thing to do was just hand him
the purse. But she was too benumbed with fear. All she
could do was stand there, trembling, slowly shaking her
head—not in refusal to cooperate but in disbelief that this
was happening.

"Now!"
he snarled, cocking the hammer of the gun.

It was that noise, that distinctive, terrifying noise, that snapped her from her paralysis, and the purse almost leapt
on its own from her hands to his. He snagged it.
...

And then he was gone.

Except he had hadn't run off. He had simply disappeared.

Mrs. Iola blinked, then reached under her glasses to rub
her eyes in confusion. She'd thought for a moment that there
had been some sort of quick motion in front of her, a flash of blue, a blur of red, just before the mugger had fled the
scene, but . . .

And then she let out a little shriek, startled, because her
purse suddenly dropped down from overhead. The mugger, however, was nowhere to be seen. Slowly, her hands shak
ing, she knelt down, picked up the pocketbook, and only
then did she notice a note attached to it.

It read,
Courtesy, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.

The TV newspeople were having a field day.

Since no one knew anything about him, no experts were required. It was the purest example of the old saying that everyone was entitled to his or her opinion, and this was certainly one of those instances where everyone had an opinion. Even the most low-rent of news operations could cover the story, because all they had to do was send out a camera crew to ask people in the street what they thought,

and they were more than happy to spout off for the ten
o'clock news.

"This is not a man," intoned a cabbie, parked at the cab
stand outside Penn Station. "My brother saw it building a nest in the Lincoln Center fountain."

"Have you ever seen his face?" inquired a construction
worker at a half-finished office building on Forty-ninth
Street. When the TV reporter shook her head, he said, "Nei
ther have I. Wait until his wife figures out he's running
around in tights."

"Never mind the vigilante thing," said an irritated police
officer outside the precinct house on Twentieth Street be
tween Seventh and Eighth Avenues. "You see all those webs
he leaves all over the city? I'm gonna cite the guy for litter
ing."

The front page of the
Daily Bugle
carried a story that was
headlined,
costumed figure saves fire victims,
and above
that an even larger headline that screamed,
WHO IS
SPIDER-MAN?

At that moment, someone else was screaming back.

"He's a criminal! That's who he is!"

J. Jonah Jameson stalked his office as if he were ready to start chewing paint off the walls. He was clutching a copy of
the bulldog edition of his own newspaper, and he was twist
ing it between his fists. His office was cluttered and chaotic,
and all over the walls were citations of public service,
framed front pages of news stories that Jameson had written
back in his reporter days, and photos of Jameson with an as
sortment of world leaders. The office should have been a place that brought him much joy, considering how jammed
it was with souvenirs of his accomplishments. Instead it was the place where he tended to vent most of his aggravation. It
wasn't a happy place for him.

Nor was it a particularly happy place at that moment for

Robbie Robertson, Jameson's city editor. Robertson was a
middle-aged African American with a head of close-cropped
graying hair, an avuncular way of speaking, and a general air
of confidence and erudition. And never were his powers of
calm and patience tested more than when he was having a meeting with Jameson.

"A vigilante!" Jameson continued in his rant. "A public menace! What's he doing on my front page!"

Before Robertson could reply, an advertising manager
named Ted Hoffman, bespectacled and nervous-looking,
walked into the office, rapping on the door for a perfunctory
knock. Jameson didn't especially like advertising man
agers. That was because he didn't especially like advertisers. He considered them a necessary evil, nothing more ... and maybe even a good deal less. Hoffman knew that and
looked as if he'd rather get a root canal or be sunk headfirst
into a vat of warm monkey vomit than have to talk business
with Jameson. "Mr. Jameson, we have a page six prob
lem. ..."

"We have a page one problem!
Shut up.*"

Hoffman was momentarily taken aback, and Robbie
seized the momentary silence—a rare enough event in
Jameson's presence—to say, "He's news."

Jumping in, Hoffman said, "They're a major account, it can't wait."

"It's about to," Jameson informed him.

Hoffman started to open his mouth, but this time it was
Robertson . . . obviously feeling that he was nearing the
end of his patience tether . . . who ignored Hoffman and
said to Jameson, "He saved six people from burning to
death—"

"—in a fire he probably started!" When Jameson saw
Robertson's incredulous expression, he tried to sound
friendly, as if it were all a big misunderstanding. As if, once Robertson had come around to Jameson's rock solid point of

view, everything would work out. "Something goes wrong,
and this creepy crawler's there! What's that tell ya?"

"Jonah, he's a hero!"

Jameson circled his desk so that they were standing face-
to-face and said reasonably, "Then why does he wear a
mask? What's he got to hide?"

Forcing himself into the discussion, Hoffman, said, "We double sold page six. Both Conway and Macy's bought three
quarters of it."

"We sold out all four printings, Jonah," said Robbie.

That stopped Jameson cold. He stared at Robertson, try
ing to digest mentally what he'd just heard.

"Sold
. . .
out?"

Robertson smiled in that way he had when he knew resistance from Jameson was about to melt away. "Every ...
copy," he said, savoring each syllable.

Immediately Jameson's discussion at the club with Nor
man Osborn came to mind. That discussion in which Osborn
had told Jameson that if he wanted to get his circulation on
the rise again, he needed to put forward a hero to the public. One they could embrace and would desperately want to read
about.

But . . . this masked man? A hero?

Jonah didn't like it. It went against the grain. Anonymity
...
it was a sickening notion to an old newsman who had at
tached his name to stories for decades. Stories that could
have gotten the crap kicked out of him. Spider-Man was def
initely hiding something, and if someone had something to
hide, it was never anything good.

But
. . .
a hero . . . newspaper circulation ... copies jump
ing off the newsstand, sales going up, money flooding back into the coffers. Jonah's newsman instincts collided head on
with his desire to turn his newspaper, his beloved
Daily
Bugle,
back into a profit-making venture.

And then, as if receiving a burst of enlightenment from

above, Jonah reached a magnificent compromise. Who did the public adore, become fascinated with, even more than
heroes?

Villains. The Dahmers, the Mansons, the Sons of Sam ...
those types captivated and engaged the attention of the buy
ing public. Jonah Jameson could have the best of both
worlds. On the one hand he could present Spider-Man as a
heroic individual, at least to start, to get people back into the
newspaper-buying habit. At the same time, he could point out to people that there was likely something very sinister,
some dark secret, that the wallcrawler was hiding. That
would give him a dangerous edge and make him even more
interesting.

All of that went through Jameson's mind in a flash, and
then he declared—as if he had just suddenly hit upon the no
tion that carving bread into slices might be a truly nifty
idea—"Spider-Man, page one, tomorrow!" He scowled at
the front page and added, "With a decent picture this time!"

Hoffman cleared his throat to catch Jonah's attention.
Casting an annoyed glance in his direction, Jameson
snapped, "Move Conway to page seven."

"There's a problem with page seven," began Hoffman.

Jameson, however, did not want to hear it. "Then move them to page eight and tell 'em we'll give 'em an extra col
umn inch. Now get out of here!"

Bobbing his head in agreement, and looking extremely relieved to be distancing himself from the whole matter,
Hoffman backed out of the door. Robbie Robertson didn't
even watch him go. "Can't get a picture. I've had Eddie
Brock on it. Nobody ever gets more than a glimpse of him."

Jameson was appalled at the apparent ineptitude of his staff. "What is he, shy?"

"Perhaps," Robertson said, trying to sound reasonable. "Not everyone is out for fame, Jonah."

That excuse didn't fly with Jameson at all. Thudding his

fist on his desk, he barked, "If we can get a picture of Julia
Roberts in a thong, we can certainly get a picture of
this
nut!" He rolled his cigar from one side of his mouth to the
other as he considered the situation. "Put an ad on the front page," he said finally. "Cash money for a picture of Spider-
Man. Doesn't want to be famous? Then I'll make him
...
in
famous!"