Did Gerry Conway Not Know Who the Jackal Was When He was Introduced?

Welcome to the 902nd installment of Comic Book Legends Revealed, a column where we examine three comic book myths, rumors and legends and confirm or debunk them. This time, our first legend is about whether Gerry Conway did not know who the Jackal's secret identity was when the villain was introduced in Amazing Spider-Man #129.

I've spent a lot of digital ink on the unusual setup that was early 1970s Marvel, where Stan Lee had been promoted to Publisher of the company, and Roy Thomas had taken over as Editor-in-Chief. As a result, since those two guys were scripting most of Marvel's late 1960s comic book output, Marvel suddenly needed a whole pile of new scripters. It was more than that, though, as Jack Kirby had left in 1970, and Kirby, of course, was doing the plotting for his books, so these new scripters had to be ready to PLOT books, as well, in the Roy Thomas style (which was to say a detailed plot, and then scripting it when the pages came in). So not only were these guys in their 20s coming in to write on a bunch of major books, but they were also getting more control of the story than had they come aboard when Kirby was still doing a lot of work for Marvel.

So enter Gerry Conway, a 19-year-old writer who was now writing Marvel's flagship comic book, Amazing Spider-Man. Obviously, John Romita was there and helped ease Conway into things with the plotting, but eventually, Conway was going to take more of a control over the book, and after the Death of Gwen Stacy, that's just what Conway did, with the introduction of the Punisher and the Jackal in Amazing Spider-Man #129, both characters that Conway came up with on his own (then designed wonderfully by Romita, who was an amazing designer, although Conway would do character sketches when he came up with new characters at the time). The fascinating thing about the Jackal's introduction, though, is that Conway had no idea who the Jackal was when he introduced him as a villain!

Why was Jackal's identity a secret?

As Conway really took control of the series, Conway looked to the past of Amazing Spdier-Man as his inspiration, and he noted a very common thing that Steve Ditko and Stan Lee did in the early years of the series. They repeatedly had characters introduced whose identities were a secret. This became less of a concept during the John Romita years, but in the first 38 issues of Amazing Spider-Man, Ditko and Lee came up with no less than FOUR characters whose whole deal was that their identities were a mystery (five if you count Electro, whose identity was never treated as a mystery, but he still had an unmasking that played on the idea of "revealing the identity of a villain").

There was the secret identity of the Big Man, the head oft the Enforcers...

There was the Green Goblin, whose identity wasn't revealed until after Ditko had left the series...

There was the Crime-Master, who knew Green Goblin's identity...

The dual mysteries of the Green Goblin and Crime-Master

and finally, soon before Ditko left the series, there was the mystery of who was the Master Planner (a mystery that confused Stan Lee, too)...

The Master Planner kept his identity a secret

Conway liked the idea of how Ditko and Lee would have these mysterious bad guys behind the scenes, with their identity a secret, so he created the Jackal without knowing who the Jackal was going to be in the end.

How did keeping the Jackal's identity a secret play right into the Clone Saga?

As part of the idea of the Jackal being the master manipulator, Conway then introduced the Punisher, as the character who was being manipulated BY the Jackal...

The amusing thing, though, and what Conway pointed out to Scott E. Williams in TwoMorrows' Back Issue #44, is that while the Jackal was intended as the main villain at the time (and thus, was in the next issue of Amazing Spider-Man, manipulating Hammerhead into attacking Spider-Man), the Punisher was instantly a more interesting character to Conway, and he brought the Punisher back into the series just six issues later, while the Jackal took a bit of a backseat to other Conway plots.

However, when Conway decided that he was goign to do a storyline involving clones to bring Gwen Stacy back (as he had been ordered to do by Stan Lee), Conway went back to the early days of Amazing Spider-Man, when Peter Parker had a professor named Warren, and so Conway killed off two birds with one stone, and had the Jackal be revealed as Professor Warren, and had the Jackal be the one who was responsible for the cloning of Gwen Stacy (and later, the whole Clone Saga).

it's really a deft piece of writing by Conway, and it's so funny to see how the later conception of the Jackal didn't really fit the one we see in Amazing Spider-Man #129-130, but yet the transition was done so smoothly that it really seemed to totally fit. The way that Conway was able to tie in this open mystery with a brand-new plot, and yet make them feel tied together organically was really just tremendous stuff by Conway (and I loved how Conway pivoted with the Punisher, as well).

Thanks to Gerry Conway and Scott E. Wiliams for the information!