I've always found Jonah Jameson more interesting when he was less of a cartoon and more of a misguided and cranky journalist with at least some integrity. Mind you, the cartoon interpretation is pretty close to Stan Lee's original take, and it's certainly valid, and more to the point, it turns out it can be the heart of a pretty good story, as Zeb Wells and Dean Haspiel prove in this issue of Tangled Web. Wells got his shot in the industry, and his reputation as a writer so far, largely on the strength of his humor, but he's got more to offer, and this book is both funny and revealing about the man who has been Spider-Man's foil for so long.
Jonah Jameson is supposed to be the character we love to hate, an insufferable jerk who browbeats everyone around him and who seems to hate everything and everyone that doesn't conform to his narrow worldview. Wells captures this Jonah in his first few pages, as the man berates not just his employees but their children. There's no love for Jonah, and when he suffers a heart attack, most of us are probably inclined to cheer for the grim reaper.
All the more impressive, then, that Wells makes the character sympathetic throughout the issue. It's become a bit of a cliche that the hardcases in fiction come from an abusive and hard-headed father figure, but it feels true enough to work, and Wells portrays the older Jameson as a believable man with monstrous tendencies. Like Jonah, he seems like the last person you'd ever want to meet in real life, but he's well-defined and interesting to read about. The confrontations between him and Jonah absolutely feel like the kind of thing that could have shaped Jonah into the man he is today, and they hit the balance between funny and tragic pretty well.
Tangled Web has become the Marvel book for indy artists, and Dean Haspiel follows in the footsteps of Jim Mahfood as a guy I wouldn't have thought really suited to Spider-Man but who turned out to be perfect. Haspiel really captures the exaggerated and cartoony bluster that makes up Jameson's persona, and his elongated and distinctive character designs are perfect for the slightly warped worldview that Jameson has.
Wells and Haspiel cover a lot of ground in this story, revealing plenty about Jonah's past and what shaped him into the man he became. What really impressed me was how they kept the almost one-dimensional, cartoonish version of Jameson that most people know and still managed to give his background a more real and three-dimensional feel, and also how the creators evoked sympathy for non-sympathetic characters and maintained a solid balance of humor and more serious aspects of the story.
