Jackal (Prof. Miles Warren) Appreciation (2019)

[MajorHoy]

from Amazing Spider-Man Annual #15 (1981)

First appearance of "Professor Warren": waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in Amazing Spider-Man #31 (December 1965)


First appearance of The Jackal:
Amazing Spider-Man #129 (February 1974)

And, oh yeah, there was some other guy introduced in that issue, too.

[Mistah K88]

Jackal is one of the rogues who needs a redesign the most... granted they have tried with the more human looking version in the 90’s I believe, but it still didn’t stick.

Do you guys prefer a mutation or a suit for this character?

[Celgress]

...Do you guys prefer a mutation or a suit for this character?

If a reboot definitely a suited character as such a design lends itself to an initial mystery storyline a la the Hobgoblin.

[HypnoHustler]

Jackal is one of the rogues who needs a redesign the most... granted they have tried with the more human looking version in the 90’s I believe, but it still didn’t stick.

Do you guys prefer a mutation or a suit for this character?

The only good thing about Clone Conspiracy was Ben Reilly's Anubis inspired Jackal costume.

[Huntsman Spider]

The only good thing about Clone Conspiracy was Ben Reilly's Anubis inspired Jackal costume.

Yeah, Ben Reilly masquerading as Anubis, the jackal-headed Egyptian god of the underworld was badass. Oh, and killing the original Jackal in ASM Worldwide 24. A karmic death if there ever was one, even if Ben's derangement by the end of The Clone Conspiracy really ruined his character for a while.

That said, some people have brought up that Miles Warren being a seemingly regular Empire State University professor who somehow becomes (or is revealed as) a proficient cloner, proficient enough to create near-perfect genetic duplicates of Gwen Stacy and Peter Parker, stretches the willing suspension of disbelief past the breaking point. Even Norman Osborn turning out to be his secret benefactor doesn't really make it add up any better, so I was thinking that, if Warren was to make better sense, it would be as a pawn of a known (within the context of the Marvel Universe) manipulator of the human (and superhuman) genome. Someone like Mister Sinister, or maybe Weapon X (or its umbrella organization Weapon Plus) or one of its offshoots, using Warren and his obsession to get at Spider-Man's DNA and mine it for whatever potential they think it possesses, Sinister because he wants to create a being superior to even mutants and Weapon X/Plus or its offshoots because they want to weaponize spider-powers against mutants. Could even throw in and expand upon that bit of retcon where Warren was either a student or partner to the High Evolutionary who later became his rival, with the High Evolutionary secretly sabotaging Warren being at least half the reason Warren could never get his clones entirely right (right enough to have a normal human lifespan, instead of suffering and dying from clone degeneration), the other half being Warren just wasn't as good at cloning as he thought he was.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

That said, some people have brought up that Miles Warren being a seemingly regular Empire State University professor who somehow becomes (or is revealed as) a proficient cloner, proficient enough to create near-perfect genetic duplicates of Gwen Stacy and Peter Parker, stretches the willing suspension of disbelief past the breaking point. Even Norman Osborn turning out to be his secret benefactor doesn't really make it add up any better, so I was thinking that, if Warren was to make better sense, it would be as a pawn of a known (within the context of the Marvel Universe) manipulator of the human (and superhuman) genome. Someone like Mister Sinister, or maybe Weapon X (or its umbrella organization Weapon Plus) or one of its offshoots, using Warren and his obsession to get at Spider-Man's DNA and mine it for whatever potential they think it possesses, Sinister because he wants to create a being superior to even mutants and Weapon X/Plus or its offshoots because they want to weaponize spider-powers against mutants. Could even throw in and expand upon that bit of retcon where Warren was either a student or partner to the High Evolutionary who later became his rival, with the High Evolutionary secretly sabotaging Warren being at least half the reason Warren could never get his clones entirely right (right enough to have a normal human lifespan, instead of suffering and dying from clone degeneration), the other half being Warren just wasn't as good at cloning as he thought he was.

That was done in Spectacular Annual 8 written by Jackal's creator Gerry Conway himself.

Conway saw Miles Warren and the Jackal as a joke villain. Miles Warren was conceived by Conway as the personification of the Gwen Stacy fandom who largely fixated on her because she died and her death made the hero look bad or made them feel bad...so the first clone saga, has Miles Warren hate and blame Spider-Man for Gwen's death, who keeps cloning and recreating Gwen at the moment of her death, and the entire point of Warren and the first clone saga is that he represents a very toxic form of nostalgia and necrophilia.

But that point got lost thanks to the worthless second Clone Saga. Now Jackal is a legit cloning dude. And he sucks as a long-time recurring Spidey rogue. It's not a role and function he was created for.

[Huntsman Spider]

That was done in Spectacular Annual 8 written by Jackal's creator Gerry Conway himself.

Conway saw Miles Warren and the Jackal as a joke villain. Miles Warren was conceived by Conway as the personification of the Gwen Stacy fandom who largely fixated on her because she died and her death made the hero look bad or made them feel bad...so the first clone saga, has Miles Warren hate and blame Spider-Man for Gwen's death, who keeps cloning and recreating Gwen at the moment of her death, and the entire point of Warren and the first clone saga is that he represents a very toxic form of nostalgia and necrophilia.

But that point got lost thanks to the worthless second Clone Saga. Now Jackal is a legit cloning dude. And he sucks as a long-time recurring Spidey rogue. It's not a role and function he was created for.

That's a pretty good read on the original Clone Saga. I do agree that the Jackal sucks as a recurring rogue for Spider-Man, because after how much he messed up Spider-Man's life, even with Norman Osborn revealed to have been behind everything all along, he can't just pop up with a new wacky scheme and be treated like it's just another day in the life for Spidey. (Yes, the same could be said of Norman Osborn himself.)

[Revolutionary_Jack]

That's a pretty good read on the original Clone Saga. I do agree that the Jackal sucks as a recurring rogue for Spider-Man, because after how much he messed up Spider-Man's life, even with Norman Osborn revealed to have been behind everything all along, he can't just pop up with a new wacky scheme and be treated like it's just another day in the life for Spidey. (Yes, the same could be said of Norman Osborn himself.)

In the case of the Green Goblin, he was done well after Bendis sent him to jail to answer for his crimes. And that allowed Norman and Goblin to become a psychotic murderer/gangster and put his and Peter's rivalry in something tangible. Also Goblin has fixations on the Osborn legacy, on power, on one-upping others. So that meant he could be leader of the Dark Avengers.

But Jackal is a psycho-professor fixated on a coed who wants to keep cloning the same two people over and over again. There's not a lot of places you can take that character.

[Huntsman Spider]

In the case of the Green Goblin, he was done well after Bendis sent him to jail to answer for his crimes. And that allowed Norman and Goblin to become a psychotic murderer/gangster and put his and Peter's rivalry in something tangible. Also Goblin has fixations on the Osborn legacy, on power, on one-upping others. So that meant he could be leader of the Dark Avengers.

But Jackal is a psycho-professor fixated on a coed who wants to keep cloning the same two people over and over again. There's not a lot of places you can take that character.

That's a good point about Osborn. I just meant in the sense that after how dangerously personal both Jackal and Osborn made things with Spider-Man/Peter, it'd be kind of hard to treat them as standard villains of the week. Hell, it could be argued that the only reason Osborn was able to branch out beyond Spider-Man was that thanks to One More Day, awful as it was, he no longer remembered (or cared about) the man under the mask, so he wasn't single-mindedly fixated on screwing with Spidey and could focus more on building his power base like he'd originally intended when he became the Green Goblin.

[Spidey5640]

I agree with Conway, Jackal is a joke and the efforts to make him an A-lister have failed miserably. Hope he stays dead.

[boots]

nice to see people getting into the spirit of an appreciation thread

[Miles To Go]

I liked him fine in the Clone Saga...yeah he was a Joker rip-off, but I was young and watching a lot of Batman: TAS around the time, what can you do?

[Huntsman Spider]

I liked him fine in the Clone Saga...yeah he was a Joker rip-off, but I was young and watching a lot of Batman: TAS around the time, what can you do?

Technically, he was both a Joker ripoff and a Green Goblin ripoff, especially the latter. Green-costumed lunatic whose identity was hidden from both the characters and the readership for a stretch of issues, plotting against Spider-Man from the shadows, turns out to be someone Spider-Man knows as Peter Parker? Same initial setup as Norman Osborn/Green Goblin, even if he wasn't supposed to be taken as seriously as Norman was.

[Ursalink]

As far as I see, the Jackal and the Green Goblin looked WAY TOO MUCH alike. I mean, I see the Jackal in his most common designs, and I think I see the Gree Goblin without his glider. I don't even see the canine traces of a Jackal.

If you ask me, Ben Reilly's outfit as the Jackal (based on Anubis, the Egyptian God with head of a Jackal) was a way better look for such a villain. Miles Warren should have use it from the very beginning. Seriously, Warren's dementia is even way too similar to Norman's Goblin style.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

As far as I see, the Jackal and the Green Goblin looked WAY TOO MUCH alike. I mean, I see the Jackal in his most common designs, and I think I see the Gree Goblin without his glider. I don't even see the canine traces of a Jackal.

A lot of people say that the Jackal was a replacement Green Goblin but Conway made Harry Osborn Green Goblin II and he said many times that Harry was intended to be the arch enemy. Jackal was a one-shot villain to deal with salty Gwen fans.

Remember Conway was told by Stan Lee that he needed to bring Gwen back somehow, so the entire plot of the First Clone Saga wasn't really a story that Conway wanted to tell and was basically a form of penance. That's why Conway didn't do it until the end of his run. It was a chore and a obligation, not a creative story, and ultimately the First Clone Saga isn't about cloning, it's not about Jackal, or Warren. It's about Peter being in love with Mary Jane, and moving on from Gwen. That's what the entire story is about. The end of the story is Peter and MJ closing a door for private time, not about Peter wondering mournfully about the philosophy of clones.

If you ask me, Ben Reilly's outfit as the Jackal (based on Anubis, the Egyptian God with head of a Jackal) was a way better look for such a villain. Miles Warren should have use it from the very beginning. Seriously, Warren's dementia is even way too similar to Norman's Goblin style.

Ben Reilly II's outfit looked better than Warren's.

But again aside from the name, the poor costume, the real problem is human cloning. Human cloning is a concept and theme that has no place in Spider-Man. It's a concept that fits in X-Men corner or any SHIELD story but it doesn't work in a Spider-Man story. The Second Clone Saga wasted two years of everyone's time with an arcane story where Peter's life was enmeshed in a bizarre conspiracy and series of weird and nonsensical plots that took Peter away from the kitchen-sink street-level corner.

Cloning as a concept depends on stuff like "What is identity? Is a testube baby a real person? Is a clone separate from the real person?" All these concepts are interesting but in a Spider-Man story they don't work well. Conway's First Saga made cloning a metaphor about nostalgia and necrophilia. But more than that it doesn't work.