Originally Posted by
Revolutionary_Jack
If this is addressed to me, there are no "levels" to fandom. Anyone starting out now is the same as anyone who's been here since 1962. I most certainly am not. I most certainly can enjoy stuff, and am not miserable. I actually enjoy discussing stuff here on CBR and other places.
No it isn't warped and quit using words like that. Acting as if I am some kind of crazy person because you disagree with my point of view. I don't always understand or follow your logic (or that of other posters) either, so I simply pick and choose what to respond to. You can do the same.
You can have legitimate issues and those legitimate issues would still not be enough to justify acts of violence. Tony Stark fired Beck and took his work and passed it as his own. That said, it doesn't surprise me that someone with Disney/Marvel's history of stiffing creators does a story like that and make you side with the corporation because the guy complaining about credit is a nutcase but that's because that's the extreme cop-out such plots and stories have always followed.
It actually is. Robert Downey Jr. is Disney-Marvel's highest paid actor and star of the first film of the MCU. So when Sony brought Spider-Man to Disney, the story became about Downey's stardom and image because in Sony's eyes, it meant MCU's biggest star and mascot with Spider-Man, and the decision to make Spider-Man and Iron Man subfranchise. If instead of Iron Man, you had Captain America out of the gate or Thor, it would be those characters that Spider-Man interacts more with in those movies.
Adrian Toomes was a honest law-abiding citizen with no criminal record until Tony Stark and Damage Control shut down his entirely legal, bought-and-paid-for salvage contract. If not for the latter, he would have continued being the former. In the case of Mysterio, Stark fired him for being "unstable" (because we all know that Tony Stark is a "very stable genius") and then kept his stuff and renamed it without any hint as to what Mysterio was like before that, but more or less him not having a criminal record either. So those are two civilians who became radicalized into villains by Tony's actions. If you think Jameson is responsible for the Scorpion, which he is, I don't see how Tony Stark isn't responsible for these guys.
In dramatic terms, Peter is on a hero's journey, and Tony Stark is his mentor. In any hero's journey, the hero has to surpass the mentor in someway or the other. That's how it works. The way to do it, is give the mentor some flaw or error in judgment that the hero sees and then calls him out on. In Star Wars, Obi-Wan's flaw and error was lying to Luke about Darth Vader, and Luke surpassed Obi-Wan by redeeming his father when Kenobi thought he was lost. In the MCU, Spider-Man isn't allowed to surpass his mentor (because said mentor, Iron Man, is played by their biggest actor and is a hero in his own right, and whatever bouts of self-deprecation Tony undergoes, you can't have the narrative with newcomer Tom Holland surpassing Robert Downey Jr.) so that means he's constantly stuck in a frustrating loop, where you have the setup to give Peter that moment, but the actual catharsis never comes. There are ways to dodge this, give Peter a different superhero partner and so on. Or simply bring Uncle Ben, which removes Peter entirely from the hero's journey model altogether and takes the story in a more active and satisfying place.
As editor of Daily Bugle, you could say that his job as editor is to do that. And he's a crusading journalist/editor. And you know, it's not up to Spider-Man to bring anybody to justice either. Jameson is acting like a vigilante, well so is Spider-Man.
When you fund a guy for a heroic purpose, bringing a vigilante to justice someone actively hunted and chased by the law, then that guy goes rogue and becomes a supervillain. Jameson didn't go in thinking he was making a supervillain and didn't actively do it. He has responsibility for that sure.
That's Jameson thinking out loud and wondering if that's the case. Jameson has moments of self-reflection and so on but that comes and goes and changes. Other writers have given different explanations.
Have you read the Dan Slott She-Hulk issue with Spidey suing Jameson in court? The entire case never goes forward because Jameson's lawyer points out that Spidey created Venom and Carnage who killed people in the hundreds, and when they cite Peter as a "star witness" they bring up the fact that Peter occassionally touched up photographs back in the day (which wasn't uncommon back in the day, a lot of professional photographers did that then, so long as what they did reflected the general truth). So the entire case got thrown out. There's no legal case Spider-Man can make against Jameson. Morally, Jameson is responsible for Scorpion but moral responsibility isn't the same as legal responsibility. Legally, Spider-Man isn't responsible for Ben's death, but morally he is. And again, Jameson's defining characteristic isn't creating supervillains. On the whole, Jameson's good outweighs his bad.
And in any case, to bring this back on topic...I don't think comparing Jameson to Alex Jones is truthful to the character or good story. Jameson always prints what he believes to be the truth. And when presented with hard evidence that's not so, he puts his opinions under editorial. That's a consistent feature of his characterization. Jameson, as Roger Stern showed, always prints the truth. You can't equate that character with Alex Jones.