Journalist Robbie Robertson has a history of reporting the facts, but an unfortunate entanglement with a school bully leads him to make less-than-ethical choices. He learns from his mistakes, and becomes The Daily Bugle’s editor-in-chief, and while there, he guides the young Bugle photographer Peter Parker, AKA Spider-Man.
Journalist in the Making
Joseph “Robbie” Robertson is born to be a journalist. As a student at Harlem High School, he works for the school paper, becoming its editor during his senior year. Hardworking and dedicated, “Robbie” is a fearless reporter—until he runs afoul of one particular subject, fellow Harlem student Lonnie Thompson Lincoln, AKA Tombstone. A massive albino taunted by his peers because of his appearance, the brutal Lonnie considers Robbie a friend of sorts since he was one of the few who never mocked him; however, when Lonnie begins using his considerable strength to extort money from classmates, Robbie prepares a story for the Harlem High paper exposing Lonnie’s activities. Ambushing Robbie after school, Tombstone beats him bloody until Robbie agrees to kill the story, which never sees print. Lonnie sees this act as a cordial understanding between friends, but Robbie becomes disgusted with himself and vows to never compromise his ethics again.
Putting the Tombstone incident behind him, Joe graduates from high school and wins a scholarship to the Columbia School of Journalism. He earns his degree and lands a job several years later as a night-desk catcher with a Philadelphia newspaper. He also marries his girlfriend, Martha, but Robbie’s old secret begins to haunt his new life. When a telephone tipster tells Robbie he knows who killed local crime lord Ozzy Montana, Robbie sets up a secret waterfront meeting; but he finds his informant dead in the grip of Tombstone, who had become a mob hitman with a penchant for snapping necks. Robbie flees the scene and keeps quiet about the whole incident, fearful of what Tombstone might do to him or his wife if he talked. Joe realizes he had never fully recovered from his early encounters with Tombstone, and that the killer had a strange sort of hold over him.
Editor Extraordinaire
Robbie is a veteran editor, manager and reporter, well-respected for his wisdom, courage and integrity. He is renowned for his saintly patience, sly wit and relentless work ethic. He has some experience with hand-to-hand combat and firearms, but is unskilled and reluctant in these areas. Having spent part of his teen years street racing under the nickname “Rocket” Robertson, he is surprisingly adept at high-speed automobile driving in an urban setting.
Killer Frenemy
Robbie gets entangled with the career criminal Tombstone at a young age. Attending the same high school, Robbie attempts to publish a revealing story about Lonnie’s activities extorting money from classmates. Lonnie beats up Robbie, which leads Robbie to kill the story. He later witnesses Tombstone killing an informant but keeps quiet about it. Robbie comes to regret his role in letting Tombstone get away with murder, so he goes on the offense and tries to take Tombstone down himself, but lands in the hospital after another brutal encounter with the murderer, who delusional, thinks Robbie a friend.
Close Ties and Colleagues
Born to Samuel and Alice Robertson, Robbie grows up to join the military. After his parents die, he thought his life was over, but then he met Martha who would become his wife. They have a son, Patrick Henry, who sadly dies at six months old. Despite all that, he realizes that his life didn’t end, and him and Martha have a second son, Randolph, whom they call Randy.
He forms a close friendship with the Bugle’s publisher and editor-in-chief, J. Jonah Jameson, serving as the calming yin to Jameson’s raging yang. Though a good newspaperman at heart with a strong social conscience, Jameson often allows his personal biases to compromise his journalistic perspective, but Robbie’s counterbalancing views keep the Bugle’s news coverage relatively fair (unlike many of Jameson’s editorials). Jameson and Robertson maintain sharply differing views on super heroes in general and Spider-Man in particular. Jameson tends to regard costumed vigilantes with suspicion and contempt, and is consumed by a jealous loathing of Spider-Man, not knowing the hero is secretly young Bugle photographer Peter Parker. Robbie has a more objective view of New York’s Super Heroes, judging them by their actions, and aides Spider-Man and other heroes on many occasions. Robbie also acts as a fatherly mentor to Peter Parker, and often seems aware of Peter’s dual identity; but he has never voiced, exploited or acted on this knowledge, and even protects Peter’s secret on occasion, such as when he steers Bugle reporter Ken Ellis away from learning the truth. He has been a friend and mentor to reporters and columnists such as Betty Brant, Kate Cushing (his successor as city editor), Kat Farrell, Ned Leeds, Joy Mercado, Leila Taylor, and Ben Urich.
Robbie’s family life often runs less smoothly than his professional life. His second son, Randy, grows to adulthood, but often fights bitterly with his father over their differing beliefs. An anti-establishment radical, Randy is a key player in student protest movements at Empire State University, where Robbie sometimes intervenes as both father and reporter. Ultimately deciding to pursue social work as a career rather than journalism, Randy transfers to the University of Pittsburgh, where he meets and marries a white Jewish woman named Amanda, much to Robbie’s discomfort. Randy eventually moves back to New York and finds employment as a social worker, and Robbie gradually accepts his son’s mixed marriage, though Randy and Amanda later break up. In recent times, Randy has been dating Gloria Grant, AKA Glory Grant, long-time secretary to Jameson and Robertson at the Daily Bugle.
In addition to his Spider-Man connection, Robertson maintains cordial relations with various other New York super heroes—notably Sam Wilson, AKA Falcon, whom he considers a friend. Robertson and Bugle columnist Leila Taylor also help Steve Rogers, AKA Captain America, and the Falcon subvert rogue United States naval operations supervised by Admiral Jimmy Westbrook in cooperation with the Rivas drug cartel.
Column of Events
Trying to forget his Tombstone failures, Robbie threw himself back into his journalism career. He and Martha moved back to Manhattan where Joe became a reporter for the Daily Bugle. Over the next twenty years, Robbie rose through the ranks to become the Bugle’s city editor and one of the city’s most respected journalists. He works closely with, and befriends, the Bugle’s publisher J. Jonah Jameson, and mentors the in-house photographer, Peter Parker.
Robertson and Spider-Man first worked together when Robbie helped Spider-Man capture the criminal Dmitri Smerdyakov, AKA Chameleon. Later, when Robbie exposed corrupt politician Sam Bullitt, Spider-Man and Bobby Drake, AKA Iceman, teamed up to rescue Robertson from a vengeful Bullitt’s thugs. Robbie went on to target another corrupt politician, mayoral candidate Richard Raleigh, and Spider-Man saved Robertson from Raleigh’s savage super-agent, the Smasher, who later killed Raleigh himself.
Jameson’s obsessive hatred of Spider-Man drove him to unusual lengths over the years, including the funding of several projects designed to capture, humiliate or destroy the hero. One such project created the mad super-criminal known as the Mac Gargan, AKA Scorpion. Jameson kept his involvement secret for years, but after Roderick Kingsley, AKA Hobgoblin, tried to blackmail him using this information, Jameson made a full public confession and stepped down as the Bugle’s editor-in-chief, promoting Robertson to replace him. While Jameson remained a very hands-on presence in the Bugle as its publisher, Robertson proved very successful and effective in his new role as the paper’s chief editor.
Then, at the height of Robbie’s success, Tombstone brought his whole world crashing down. After years of rising through the ranks of organized crime as a Philadelphia mob enforcer, Tombstone began working for New York crime boss Wilson Fisk, AKA Kingpin. Consumed by guilt over having helped make Tombstone’s many murders possible with his silence, Robbie confronted Tombstone with a gun, intending to take him into custody and tell the police everything. Lonnie overpowered Joe and seriously injured him, seemingly breaking his back. By this time, Robbie had left an audiotape with Peter Parker, confessing his role as an accessory in Tombstone’s criminal career. But when Tombstone menaced the crippled Robertson in the hospital, Joe began to have second thoughts about going to the police. Berated by Parker and reporter Ben Urich for his weakness, and supported by Randy, Robbie finally worked up the courage to face his fears. He rapidly regained his mobility through physical therapy, and made a full confession of his Tombstone secrets to his Bugle colleagues and the public. Robbie offered to resign his editorial post, but Jameson refused to accept his resignation. Lonnie, meanwhile, had been captured by Spider-Man, who was baffled by Tombstone’s admission that he spared Robertson’s life because he still regarded Robbie as his friend.
The public and Robertson’s colleagues seemed prepared to forgive his mistakes, but a corrupt Kingpin-connected judge sent Robbie to prison for his indirect role in Tombstone’s crimes. To make matters worse, Tombstone fixed it so that he and Robbie ended up in the same federal prison where Lonnie and his cronies could continue to torment his old friend. Robertson befriended a massive convict known as Bruiser, who acted as his bodyguard for a time, but Tombstone’s followers ambushed the duo and Tombstone beat the wounded Bruiser to death. Later, Tombstone broke out of prison, taking Robbie with him as a hostage. When Spider-Man intervened, Tombstone had the hero at his mercy and was about to kick him off an airborne helicopter, but Robbie tackled Tombstone first, sending himself and Lonnie hurtling toward Earth. Incredibly, they survived the fall and landed in a riverbed on Amish farmland, where Tombstone forced the Amish folk to treat the seriously injured Robbie, then challenged Robertson to a duel to settle their differences. Robertson was taking a beating until he finally struck back by stabbing Tombstone with a nearby pitchfork. Badly wounded and shocked that his “friend” Robbie would do this to him, Tombstone staggered off alone, and Robbie turned himself in to the authorities; however, the late Bruiser’s brother, attorney Stuart McPhee, used his connections to secure Robertson a Presidential pardon. Robbie was released from prison and reclaimed his post at the Bugle.
Tombstone soon resurfaced and Robertson confronted him again, this time shooting him; however, as a result of this encounter, Tombstone was accidentally exposed to an experimental gas that made him superhumanly powerful. Pleased with this outcome, even grateful, Lonnie gave up his vendetta against Robertson and told Robbie their debts were settled, though Tombstone remains active as a dangerous super-criminal.
When Thomas Firehart, AKA Puma, engineered a hostile takeover of the Daily Bugle as part of a misguided scheme to improve Spider-Man’s reputation, Robbie was among the Bugle veterans who joined Jonah in publishing the new Jameson News Digest until Jameson regained control of the Bugle and they all returned to their old positions. Later, when corrupt industrialist Norman Osborn, AKA Green Goblin, seized control of the Bugle, Robbie resigned in protest, but returned after Jameson squeezed Osborn out.
Robbie eventually made some headway in moderating Jameson’s anti-super hero views, and they hired retired Super Heroine Jessica Jones to collaborate with Ben Urich on a superhuman affairs column called The Pulse; however, after Jameson wrote a viciously negative editorial about the latest Avengers roster (including Jones’ husband Luke Cage), Jones angrily quit the Bugle. Urich later resigned as well, teaming with fellow reporter Sally Floyd to found the alternative Front Line newspaper.
When unscrupulous publisher Dexter Bennett staged a rapid hostile takeover of the Daily Bugle while Jameson was recovering from a heart attack, Bennett quickly converted the paper into “The DB!,” a trashy tabloid largely devoid of journalistic ethics. Robbie stayed on as editor-in-chief for a while, hoping the reckless Bennett would self-destruct or that Jameson would somehow reclaim the publication; but when Bennett refused to curtail his intrusive coverage of celebrity Bobby Carr even though it was endangering Carr and others by inciting the murderous super-criminal Paper Doll, Robertson finally resigned in protest. He quickly landed a new editing job at Front Line, where photographer Peter Parker soon joined him.
Later, after Max Dillon, AKA Electro, destroyed the DB, Marla Jameson bought the Daily Bugle back from Bennett, and gives Robbie permissions to remake the Front Line into the new Daily Bugle.
