Great Caesar’s Ghost!: 5 Great Comic Book Journalists

Journalism is one of today’s less respected professions. Though journalists aren’t quite in the pits occupied by lobbyists and car salesmen, a 2008 Gallup poll found that 25% of Americans think that journalists are ethical and honest, versus 31% who think they aren’t.

But back in the Golden and Silver Ages of comics, journalists were heroes. By day, Superman was a reporter. Peter Parker was a newspaper photographer. Even as public respect slumped in the ’80s and ’90s, comics preserved the myth of the journalist as incorruptible truth-seeker. Here are some of the best:

5. Rorschach, Watchmen

The mask-wearing, pinkie-breaking antihero of Alan Moore’s classic graphic novel is a journalist in the original sense of the word. The journal he keeps stands as a pillar of integrity in a world of too many sellouts, exposing corruption as he defines it (in addition to saying lots of weird stuff about dead dogs and President Truman), and it’s written with a broader audience ultimately in mind. Sadly, in the movie Rorschach’s journal was reduced to a goofy voiceover:

4. Clark Kent/Lois Lane, Superman

In the comics, Clark Kent becomes a reporter largely because the timetable of the job gives him an excuse to keep odd hours and disappear when it’s convenient. On the job, his relationship with his secret love Lois is as professional and competitive as they come: they’re constantly battling to get the top story. Lois is the better reporter of the two, but Clark sometimes uses his superpowers to get the scoop. Wait, does that violate journalistic ethics of some sort?

3. Tintin, Tintin

Tintin doesn’t have superpowers, but he’s a top-notch correspondent. With his dog Snowy at his side, he covers a pretty wide beat, ranging from meteorites to the Bolshevik uprising. The comic has been accused of displaying racist and colonialist attitudes for its less-than-enlightened coverage of people who aren’t Western Europeans, but the beef there is less with Tintin than with the series’ author, Hergé.

2. Spider Jerusalem, Transmetropolitan

A cult classic for many comic buffs, Warren Ellis’s Transmetropolitan is the rare modern comic book series that stars a journalist. But there’s no Lois-and-Clark cute newsroom banter to be had here. Spider Jerusalem is a drug-binging, wonderfully profane muckraker (modeled on Hunter S. Thompson) whose weapon of choice is the appropriately-named “bowel disruptor.” But as a reporter, he’s the real deal: he’s determined to expose political corruption, whatever the cost — and in the dystopian world of Transmetropolitan, there’s a lot of both.

1. J. Jonah Jameson, The Amazing Spider-Man

People whose primary exposure to Spider-Man is the film franchise may think of J. Jonah Jameson, the editor of The Daily Bugle, as a tabloid hack whose main concerns are paying Peter Parker for pictures of Spider-Man and running damning editorials about the same. But back in the days of The Amazing Spider-Man, he was a real newsman: he insisted on scoping out every story himself and making sure his reporters got it right, he campaigned for civil rights before it was fashionable, and he refused to bow to the threats of whatever supervillain ruled the day. Though he’s sometimes been portrayed as a bit of a buffoon, Jameson shows a courage and curiosity that we wish more modern-day journalists had.