What is this? Well perhaps this is easier to say what it is not? It's not what I usually do. I normally write only original things for publication. I have fond memories of the cartoon show as a little kid and a vague recollection of comic books from my father. Never read them myself. I'm not saying I can do any better. But I can give you something entertaining and thought-provoking.
Ret-Conned
"I swear I am never drinking that much…'er….it wasn't that much…Vodka before hitting the hay. I had the strangest dream, my son was a wolfman and he was fighting with some female version of the Jolly Green giant."
J. Jonah Jameson esteemed publisher of the Daily Bugle, as well as a small up and coming Media Empire that was beginning to rival Conde Nast, was sitting at his desk looking at the next day's layouts. He combed the page with discerning bloodshot eyes.
Robert, Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Bugle smiled. He always found Jameson to be a very funny man. Especially when he was playing up his gruff Bedford-Stuyvesant bred persona. It always amazed him how many people never got the fact that the man was joking half the time.
"That is strange; no wonder you look so haggard. Your eyes are absolutely bloodshot."
Jonah gave a scowl that he normally reserved for the rare confrontation with Spiderman and was forced to concede that he was in dire need of a good night's sleep.
"You're right. It was just one thing after another this week. I have been having nightmares. The first nightmare I was threatened by a mercenary in yellow spandex with machetes for fingers and a bad haircut right out of a seventies porno. As if one masked vigilante and two mutant madmen weren't enough, in my nightmare there were thousands of them! In another I financed the creation of a murderer. All in fruity costumes and unnaturally attractive, he was a walking gay pride parade. All the others were too, I felt like I was in Provincetown or on Castro Street. Except they all burned things." The words seem to weigh him down "The destruction, that's how I know it, was a dream. It was too goddamn much."
He left out the part about the superheroins abnormally large breasts and costumes so revealing that would have sparked a women's lib riot. That was what he got for not having a lay in a month.
"Maybe it's a sign that you're taking this Spiderman vendetta thing a little too hard?"
"It's not a vendetta, Robert, it's a public service."
"This isn't about her is it? I know it's around the time…"
"No. This isn't about my wife. It's about making the deadline and these goddamn nightmares that are keeping me awake at night. I need a cigar."
He pulled out a box from his desk drawer and withdrew a box of Monte Cruz Negra Cubana cigars, double corona size. He liked the long filler because they were larger, more imposing and distinctive than a cigarette, which you could pick up at any gas station or newsstand. Robbie always sighed when he went into one of his diatribes about how New York made criminals out of smokers.
If he was going to die of lung cancer at least he was going out in style.
Robert chuckled, departing from his concern. "I thought it was just one. I mean they can't be that bad and since when do you remember your dreams anyways."
Jonah gave a huff and cracked a hesitant grimace of a smile. He then began to raise his fingers listing each on of his absurd dreams.
"It can be that bad. On Monday I dreamed I was attacked in my own swimming pool by a poor man's aqua-lad that kept claiming he was "named the submarine", and get this, from the lost city of Atlantis. I don't have a swimming pool! Then I had a dream that this Greek assassin is trying to kill this older man in the street. Then this man runs out of an S&M club in leather Satanist paraphernalia, she then tells him he is blind and he says he is. I run for cover and I keep yelling for the cops to do something but they just run away."
"Then on Wednesday this anthropomorphic green scorpion destroys my office and starts accusing me of turning him into a freak in some bizarre vengeance plot against Spiderman. He starts to crush my throat and then I wake up. John came running in with a baseball bat, said he heard me screaming something about monsters and came rushing to dear old dad's aid. He is a good son. Of all the things I've done I can say I have raised that boy right."
By this time Robert was looking at him quizzically. At the mention of the scorpion he began to laugh hysterically. "You, messing with science? I mean my god even I think the editorial you did against genetically modified food was harsh."
"I'll say it before, as I've said it time and time again, fish genes do not belong in the goddamn strawberries."
"Well they're not turning into giant scorpion men." He resumed laughing and Jameson gave him an indulgent smirk.
"The last dream I had was of this bald man in a wheelchair, another man who looks like a concentration camp victim was pummeling him. He says that it's over. He's the winner and that God is waking up. Then I woke up."
"Now that's ego stroking."
"If you know anything about that interpreting dreams tripe, I would really like to know. I haven't a goddamn clue."
Robert laughed and shrugged. Which made Jonah sigh.
"Have you ever heard anything more ridiculous? Even more absurd was the dream I had yesterday. Peter Parker died. Sad thing, going to his funereal, Mary Jane and his grandmother were there, I must have been thinking of Joan. Kid fresh out of college put in a casket, just something fundamentally wrong in it. Then he comes back to life, but Peter parker has turned into Spiderman! I'm watching TV and the web-head was standing next to a robot, then he removes his mask on CNN and there is Parker. Naturally I pass out and for the first few seconds that I am unconscious I realize it's all a dream."
Jameson was careful to leave out the part where he wound up at his son's house because he was in a drunken stupor. Pounding on the penthouse door to demanding to be let inside. He didn't want to give the impression that he was an alcoholic. He wasn't. It was just a hard week. The anniversary of Joan's death. On top of it all was the scandal at Woman Magazine. That fucking Claudia Padilla Ramirez, a young fashion writer who decided to take a page out of the Devil Wears Prada and make her career on writing an anti-corporate tell all book about how "she fooled them all." His top editor Mona Dearly had resigned because of the scandal.
The head line on the New Yorker was posted was Drowned Mona Dearly. Bastards.
He had lost his best senior editor so some Dartmouth grad could get her jollies scamming him. She had lied on sixteen stories, made a profit and now the grandson of Frank Lloyd Wright was suing him for libel and the stock was tanking.
"Huh, Peter Parker as Spiderman." He shook his head again.
"Yeah, can you believe it," Robbie added.
Outside a very shocked Peter choked on the tea he had been drinking, spitting it out like a torrential shower from a broken pipe. Several people rushed to his aid. After rasping that he was "Aiye am awight", people drifted back to their jobs.
He went inside the office his face a whole new shade of white. Praying to whatever gods could hear him that his boss hadn't developed clairvoyant powers.
"Come on in Parker." Jameson said in an unusually friendly voice. "Glad to see you're alive. Had the most awful dream you died then turned into the webhead. HAHA, anyways if you ever kick the bucket I'll pay for the flowers. You want tulips or roses? HAHA. No seriously, I'm glad your alive kid, don't know what we do without you. You're the only one that ever brings in any good pictures of those costumed freaks."
Robbie nudged him. Peter laughed. Inwardly wincing at Jameson's last comment.
"Continuing, there was a beheading at the Mirage Club in Hell's Kitchen. We're dealing with a hit by the Albanian thugs. They were running a heroin racket. The mob felt threatened. They probably hired a Serbian to do it. Trust me, all the years as an imbedded reporter in the Balkans has taught me that this'll be a bloodbath. It's the next St. Valentines Day massacre! The beginning of the next bloods and crips war! And we will have covered it first! Front page, head line, I got it, Headless Man in Topless bar, we need pictures, don't just stand around 'ere go get 'em. Make 'em gruesome. But not too bloody. It'll get more calls into the tipline. I want this killer found. Get going!"
To Peter's own surprise he shouted. "Yes, Sir!" In a very marine-like fashion before bolting out the door faster than should have been humanly possible. Not that his publisher noticed.
Robert grinned at him. "Do you think that kid is every going to figure out that you are just joking with him?"
Jameson shrugged. "I don't know. I'm afraid what would happen if I stop making demands of him. Seems to keep him motivated. He is the only one I know besides Isabelle McClain that gets his work in six hours ahead of deadline!"
(If you didn't get it allow me to explain. I watched the movie Spiderman during a break from working on a short story drama about Albanian-Serbian ethnic conflict. I had writers block, and this came out.
I wondered, well if they had the comics then, and only one person, the prize character, as the first hero. Where would the rest have gone, since none of the characters appeared in any of the movies friends have dragged me to?
So, what you have just seen is a writers detour. As a newspaper writer, I've always like him from the movies. As a bit of a joke and a bit of exposure for the much utilized writers device of the universal reset button, the entire marvel universe was just a dream of J. Jonah Jameson's…or rather his prolonged nightmare. So what are we left with? A spider and refreshed Hollywood franchise, and maybe one man's prophetic dreams. That what Wikipedia called a "ret-con" I believe.)
It will be continued if it received well. I can always write a little more when I'm stuck with original content.