Integrity’s Tombstone: Spider-Man’s Forgotten Black Father Figure, Joe Robertson

Abstract Created by Stan Lee and John Romita in 1967, Daily Bugle City Editor Joe “Robbie” Robertson has appeared in more than sixty years of Spider-Man comic books and films, personifying journalistic integrity and serving as a bulwark against the yellow journalism of J. Jonah Jameson. As the sole voice of reason in the Spider-Man universe's nightmarish New York, Robertson acts as an honorary father figure to the orphaned Peter Parker, to the chagrin of his militant, biological son Randy. Unsurprisingly, Robertson's appearance and dialogue change over time to align him with real-life figures of Black male exceptionalism. His depictions in the 1960s are modeled after Sidney Poitier, the 1980s Robertson is overtly compared to the Cosby Show's (1984-92) Cliff Huxtable, and the 2000s Robertson finally becomes the head of the Bugle just as Barack Obama becomes the first Black president of the United States. Like Key and Peele's comedy Obama, Robertson has a “rage translator” in the figure of a Harlem gangster named Tombstone, who is at once Robertson's archenemy and the gothic double who says and does what Robertson wished he could. The Tombstone Saga ends when the lifelong enemies realize that they have more in common as Black men in a racist America than they realized. Notably, the Robertson/Tombstone feud storyline displaces the narrative centrality of the title character of The Spectacular Spider-Man for two years (1988-90), an unprecedented development presaging the 2011 creation of the Afro-Latino Spider-Man Miles Morales, who stars in his own comics and films.