CSBG Archive
A Year of Cool Comic Book Moments – Day 105
Here is the latest cool comic book moment in our year-long look at one cool comic book moment a day (in no particular order whatsoever)! Here‘s the archive of the moments posted so far!
Today we continue my spur of the moment middle-of-the-week theme week where I look at cool moments in comics where the cool moment is for a character who does not normally appear in the book in question. This time around, we take a look at an issue of Scott Lobdell’s Uncanny X-Men that could have easily been mistaken for an issue of Amazing Spider-Man!
Enjoy!
To set the scene, the X-Men on Earth (half the team was stuck in space on a mission involving the Phalanx) were just captured by government forces led by the mysterious Bastion, head of the secretive Operation: Zero Tolerance.
Now, in Uncanny X-Men #346, we see, courtesy of Scott Lobdell and Joe Madureira, how the Daily Bugle responds to the story (oh, there’s also a separate story with Spider-Man encountering Marrow which leads Marrow down the path to becoming a member of the X-Men via this storyline, but that’s, as they say, another story). Do note that in an earlier issue, a Daily Bugle reporter was killed by Bastion while doing an investigation into Bastion’s activities.
Sweet opening, right?
Later, Bastion sneaks into Jameson’s office while Jonah is trying to dig up more information about what is going on, and offers him a mysterious disk…
I’d say “the” moment is the big with the blank computer, but I can also live with the bit where he tells Bastion to get out and adds “I’ll see you charged with Nick (the aforementioned reporter)’s murder.”
That’s a clever scene right there by Lobdell.
Jameson had not been this cool in the actual pages of Spider-Man for YEARS at this point (unless we count Untold Tales), so it was quite a shocker to see Lobdell and Joey Mad do such nice work with JJJ in Uncanny X-Men, of all places! This seriously was one of the best issues of Spider-Man in a number of months, and it wasn’t even an issue of Spider-Man!!
21 Comments
Bernard the Poet
April 16, 2009 at 3:12 am
What a lot of words – and most of them not saying anything.
Particularly ugly is Robbie’s thought bubble – explaining Lobdell’s point in black and white for the really slow of mind.
Frank Miller gives JJJ a speech about power in his Born Again arc, which is so superior to this piece of hack work that it makes me want to cry.
dmor173
April 16, 2009 at 3:32 am
i dropped out before the end of zero tolerance so im still not sure who bastion was.
I did enjoy iceman taking a bigger role though.
and i know its joe mad but JJJ is on the juice.
bad trotsky
April 16, 2009 at 4:13 am
JJJ is not a likeable charecter most of the time. But he believes in the news and when he stands up for it which he does from time to time. Its more bad ass than wolverine.
Patient Boy
April 16, 2009 at 4:58 am
What’s interesting to me is how exactly the balance is met between “reporter with integrity” Jameson and “Spider-Man: Threat or Menace?” Jameson.
hangmanjury
April 16, 2009 at 5:24 am
While I like the JJJ moments and all…
Why didn’t Bastion just kill him?
Matt Bird
April 16, 2009 at 6:02 am
I’ve always loved this side of JJJ and I wish that they’d had some of this in the movies so that we could have seen J. K. Simmons get to play this side of the character.
Richard J. Marcej
April 16, 2009 at 6:06 am
I hope you’ll ease up on some cool moments taken from the 90′s era comics. I’m sure there are some distinct worthy scenes from those books, but, GOD the artwork is hideous!
Adam
April 16, 2009 at 6:24 am
Brian, I agree that this was a Spider-Man comic masquerading as an X-Men issue. I think there might have been a two-page “here’s where the X-Men are right now,” but other than that, this issue was all Jonah and Spidey. I was amazed they didn’t re-title this issue “The Uncanny Spider-Man.”
Martin
April 16, 2009 at 6:31 am
I remember this piece from mid nineties. As soon as you mentioned Zero Tolerance, this moment came to me.
OZT had some good moments. Iceman and his father, this piece of JJ. The introduction of Cecilia Reyes. It is a shame the end of the crossover, really a pitty. And the back story of Bastion was told finally a year later, in a special that I never bought.
If I have to chose a moment in these pages, it would be the dialogue:
“You are destroying the information!”
“No. I´m postponing it”
chad
April 16, 2009 at 6:38 am
loved that JJ may be and always will an unlikeable man but proving no matter what he will not compromise what integrity as a publisher he has. made the moment worthy not to mention the smackdown and defiance he showed bastion by saying get out he is not for sale at any price and he will see him pay for the murder of the reporter.
Ant
April 16, 2009 at 6:38 am
If I remember correctly there was another scene between those two where Bastion threatens to dig up dirt on JJJ if he doesn’t play along. Jameson’s response was to flip him that day’s issue of the Bugle where he had published everything about himself that Bastion could try to use as leverage. That was a cool JJJ moment.
Diagnull
April 16, 2009 at 7:15 am
I think an even better JJJ moment is from Amazing Spider-Man #250 when he decides to print a confession about his involvement with creating the Scorpion.
Link blatently stolen from Dave’s Longbox:
http://photos1.blogger.com/img/198/4480/640/Amazing%20Spider%20Man%20250%201.jpg
Matt D
April 16, 2009 at 7:24 am
@Matt Bird: Isn’t there a moment where he won’t give up Peter’s information or something like that in one of the Spider-Man movies?
jazzbo
April 16, 2009 at 9:58 am
I’m liking these moments from comics that a lot of people wouldn’t consider when thinking about great moments in comics. Everyone knows stories like Watchmen and Born Again are full of great moments. It’s neat to see some from a comic that might not be that great overall, but still has some cool scenes in it.
Stephen
April 16, 2009 at 10:08 am
It’s always fun to see X-Men characters and concepts integrated into the regular MU; I hate how sheltered the books get from time-to-time.
Ruler Bulon
April 16, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Man, JJJ name-drops a ton of forgotten supporting characters there. Ken Ellis, Angela Yin, Evan Swann (who was Captain Universe for a while), and Blake Tower – although Tower, at least, popped up in Amazing Spider-Man recently.
Mike Blake
April 16, 2009 at 2:37 pm
I wonder if those were deliberate cameos by Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane at the beginning of the sequence — someone even calls 3J “Chief!”
Teebore
April 17, 2009 at 8:38 am
Love this moment. This was one of the issues that cemented JJJ as one of my all-time favorite characters.
Dalarsco
April 17, 2009 at 11:24 am
Fantastc choice. OZT is probably my favorite Jameson story. It really should be reprinted.
James 1
December 27, 2010 at 10:24 pm
The artwork is ass cancer. It’s on the level of ASM 650 type clownscribble.
Saad
November 29, 2012 at 9:54 am
This was one of my favorite comics growing up, love Joe Mad and (after this issue), JJJ will always have a soft spot in my heart.