Day Seventy-Seven: I'm The Urban Spaceman, Baby
It is a scientifically proven fact, borne out by years of study on the part of a crack team of CalTech boffins, that one of the worst things you can do in terms of reducing your life expectancy is to be in any way associated with Spider-Man. You'll either end up falling off a bridge, jumping off the same bridge, blowing your own brains out or (if the tease Marvel are plying us with at the moment regarding the possible fate of either Mary Jane or Aunt May is to be credited with any weight) having your brains blown out by a third party.
One of the worst sufferers, though, has to be poor old John Jameson. Son of Jolly Jonah Jameson, the Daily Bugle's mal-'tached publisher, John's an example of someone with a bright future whose proximity to the weirdness magnet that is Spidey has seen a succession of strange and unpleasant events befall him. First off, he had to be rescued by Spider-Man when one of his space missions went awry. Following that, he contracted a weird virus during a space walk which made him superhumanly strong, although it had the side effect that he was forced to wear a containment suit in order to helphim control his new power. He let his dad talk him into trying to take down Spider-Man to prove himself to be a true hero, but naturally Spidey cleaned Jameson's clock, and eventually neutralised the alien virus which had given him his powers.
Oh, it just gets better, though. You see, a while after that, Jameson was sent on a moon mission to collect rock samples. Now, you might have thought that we have machines that do that kind of thing for us without having to send an actual decorated military chap up to pick up bits of stone, but it seems not. While Jameson was kicking about on the moon, he found a glowing red gemstone. Knowing what we know about the Marvel Universe, you would imagine that Jameson would have been similarly clued-in and realised that he should well enough alone, but no. He took the rock back to earth and, having managed to smuggle it away from the government scientists who were no doubt doing desperately exciting things to it with brushes and stuff, had it made into a pendant. That's right, he loved his bit of moonstone so much that he developed a love of new age jewellery. Sadly, he was wearing it on the first night of a full moon and, as happens in such situations, he was transformed into a wolf-man (or, as he renamed himself, a Man-Wolf). This happened to him every full moon for five months, until he eventually decided to go to his dad for help. Jameson Sr, of course, believed Man-Wolf to be in cahoots with Spider-Man, because really, who isn't? Eventually winning over his dad, he told him that he couldn't even take off the pendant, because it was stuck to him. This was no impediment to Spidey, though, who ended up fighting Man-Wolf and just tearing a big lump of Jameson's throat out in the process of ripping away the pendant. The curse of the Man-Wolf was over, and Jameson had an interesting scar to show girls in bars.
Yes, of course that's what happened. He lived happily ever after. No, of course not, don't be ridiculous. He was turned back into Man-Wolf by the living vampire Morbius, and had more escapades before eventually being captured by Nick Fury and SHIELD. They made him an offer he couldn't refuse - having gone AWOL from NASA, they would offer him the chance to have this struck from his record if he went and investigated some shenanigans which were going on up on a space station. When Jameson got there, he found that there were some extra-dimensional chaps up on the station who had come from Other-Realm, the dimension which was also the point of origin of the Man-Wolf pendant. Jameson followed them back there, and found that he could stay in his wolf form while retaining his human personality and intelligence as the inheritor of the powers of a being called Stargod. As Stargod, Jameson fought an evil sorceror before returning to Earth.
In the years which followed, Jameson's gone back and forth between being unpowered, being Man-Wolf, and being Stargod. He's been a hero, he's been a villain, he's been all over the shop. John Jameson simply cannot catch a break - most recently, he fell in love with Jennifer Walters, the heroine known as She-Hulk. Unfortunately, it seems that her feelings for him were induced by the ex-Avenger Starfox, who's either a playful cupid or a creepy date-rapist depending on how you view his powers. Long story short, they got married, he fell head over heels in love with a seven foot tall green woman, and had his heart broken. It's okay, though, because just after that he became Stargod again, and was last seen heading back to Other-Realm to make sure everything was hunky dory there.
There is a moral to be taken from the story of John Jameson, and it is this: do not, no matter how much it might seem like a good idea at the time, become involved in any way with Spider-Man. Things can only get complicated.
