Gwen Stacy

• 1. A Death Remembered

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  Gwen Stacy is a college student in Marvel's Spider-Man comics, and her murder in 1973 is still argued over by readers and writers. In 2004, the artist John Romita Sr. looked back on the uproar. Fans had threatened him, writer Gerry Conway and editor Stan Lee, he said. Almost forty years later they were still talking about it, so he decided the team had made the right choice. That is a strange verdict on a story that readers hated. This documentary asks how a supporting character was created almost by accident, and who decided that she must die. It asks how she actually died, and why a character killed in the early 1970s keeps returning as a clone, a ghost, a rival and a hero from another universe.

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• 2. Meant for Peter

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  Gwen Stacy first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #31, dated December 1965, created by writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko. The plan was for her to be Peter Parker's central love interest. From issue #39, John Romita Sr. replaced Ditko as primary artist and co-plotter. Romita had worked in romance comics, and he was chosen partly to draw young women who were, in his words, "very sexy and flashy." He found inspiration in magazines such as Seventeen.

  Mary Jane Watson was first depicted in issue #42, dated November 1966, and readers took to her at once. Fans wanted Mary Jane, not Gwen, as Peter's main girlfriend. Lee later admitted that Mary Jane "always seemed more interesting!" He described Gwen as "a sweet girl," pure, wholesome and loyal, and thought she would make Peter a perfect wife. Mary Jane, in his view, "was a real party girl."

  Romita remembered Gwen differently from the glamorous image he kept trying to give her. He thought of her as intelligent, responsible and level-headed, almost the opposite of Mary Jane. In the early stories, Mary Jane's flirting with Peter was what made Gwen notice him. Romita said that Lee decided to fool the readers by making Gwen the girlfriend.

  Issue #56, dated January 1968, introduced her father, NYPD Captain George Stacy. He was fond of Peter and supportive of Spider-Man, a goodwill that would be tested in issue #90.

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• 3. A Death Decided

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  In issue #90, in 1970, falling debris killed Captain George Stacy during a fight between Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus. Gwen blamed Spider-Man and left for Europe to cope with her loss. She hoped Peter would ask her to marry him and talk her into staying, but his guilt stopped him from proposing. Her feelings pulled her back to New York, and the romance revived.

  Gerry Conway and Roy Thomas took over from Lee as writer and editor of the series. Together with Romita, who was now working as an inker, they decided that Gwen would be killed. Romita said he first raised the idea in a plotting session with Conway, back when he was still penciller. Thomas and Conway wanted an unexpected death that would shock readers, and they first considered Aunt May. Romita rejected that.

  He pointed instead to the comic strip Terry and the Pirates, where the death of a love interest had a large cultural impact. Killing Peter's girlfriend, he reasoned, would really shake up the fans.

  Conway had his own motive. Like Lee, he found Mary Jane the more interesting character, and he wanted to bring her to the front. In his words, "Gwen didn't have an edge. She was just a nice person."

  The choice stayed controversial among fans and some writers. Conway claimed that Lee endorsed it. Lee said he was sorry she had been killed, and that he "would have enjoyed keeping both Gwen and MJ and letting them play off against each other."

  Inside the story world, the loss reshaped Mary Jane. She felt it deeply and became a more mature and compassionate person. Her grief also drew her and Peter into a closer friendship, which eventually became romance.

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• 4. The Bridge

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  The two-part story "The Night Gwen Stacy Died" ran in The Amazing Spider-Man #121-122, published in June and July 1973, and was written by Conway. The Green Goblin, Norman Osborn, had learned that Peter Parker was Spider-Man. He blamed Peter for a recent drug overdose suffered by his son, Harry Osborn, and he wanted revenge. He kidnapped Gwen. Peter was ill, but he searched for her anyway and found her unconscious on top of a bridge.

  The artwork shows the Brooklyn Bridge, although the text describes the George Washington Bridge. During the battle, the Goblin slammed into Gwen and sent her toward the water. Spider-Man shot a webline to catch her. The sudden stop snapped her neck.

  Conway said he added the "SNAP" sound effect subconsciously, without grasping what it implied. He then became fascinated by what Spider-Man's part in her death meant for comic books. Many writers and fans treat the story as the end of the Silver Age of Comics. Before it, apart from origin stories, heroes did not fail so catastrophically, and a hero's loved ones did not die so suddenly and without warning.

  What exactly killed her has been argued for decades. A note on the letters page of issue #125 says the whiplash from Spider-Man's webbing was the cause. The comic Civil War: Casualties of War: Captain America/Iron Man, from 2007, agreed. So did an issue of Peter Parker/Spider-Man, which confirmed a broken neck from the webbing.

  The 1987 Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe blamed the fall instead. That is technically true too, since without the fall the sudden stop could not have happened. Physicist James Kakalios, in his book The Physics of Superheroes, confirms that Newton's laws say the sudden stop would have killed her.

  Readers in Latin America, meanwhile, were spared this verdict entirely.

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• 5. Bringing Her Back

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  La Prensa, then the Mexican publisher of Marvel Comics, doubted that its readers would accept Gwen's death. It split El Sorprendente Hombre-Araña into its own continuity, with brand new stories written by Raul Martinez and drawn by José Luis González Durán. In those pages Peter and Gwen remained a couple, and she stayed alive for another 60 issues and 45 stories. The run ended in 1974, when another publisher picked up the Marvel rights.

  In the United States, Stan Lee had become Marvel's publisher, and fans frequently criticized him for the killing at his public appearances. Lee himself found the death objectionable. He insisted that Conway write a story bringing her back. Conway objected, and gave in only on one condition: once she was revived, he could write her out of the book whenever he wanted.

  He chose cloning. Miles Warren, one of Gwen's professors, had secretly loved her, and after her death he went insane and became the villain called the Jackal. In The Amazing Spider-Man #144, from May 1975, the Jackal's clone of Gwen is perfectly healthy but has no memory of anything since her death. She accepts that she is not the same person who once loved Peter Parker, and leaves to find a new life.

  The clone kept resurfacing. In the 1988 crossover "The Evolutionary War," the High Evolutionary, who had once taught Warren, captured her. He claimed that Warren had failed to perfect his process and had instead injected a young woman with a genetic virus carrying Gwen's DNA. A Young Goddess named Daydreamer purged the virus from the woman. A later story retconned this. Warren had succeeded after all, and Daydreamer had accidentally given the clone a false new life as Joyce Delaney.

  In the second "Clone Saga," which began in 1994, Joyce was married to Warren Miles, a clone of Professor Warren. A copy of Peter's book of Spider-Man photos stirred her memory, and she came back to New York. After helping Spider-Man and Scarlet Spider fight the Jackal, she vanished again and built a life in London. A different Gwen clone, who believed she was the original, appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #399 in 1995. She died of clone degeneration in the very next issue of the story arc.

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• 6. Retold and Rewritten

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  The fourth and final issue of the miniseries Marvels, published in April 1994 by Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross, retells her death from a bystander's view. Photographer Phil Sheldon befriends Gwen, who has absolved Spider-Man of blame for her father's death. Her simple faith in heroes convinces Sheldon that superheroes exist to protect innocents like her. He resolves to write a book praising them. When the Green Goblin kidnaps Gwen, Sheldon chases the action in a taxi and witnesses her death. Reports say she died of the shock of the fall, but Sheldon thinks it looks like something else, and his faith in heroes is shattered. Gerry Conway credits the story with revealing the cultural significance of her death.

  Jeph Loeb revisited her story again in Spider-Man: Blue, published in 2002-2003.

  The arc "Sins Past," by J. Michael Straczynski in 2004-2005, tried something far bolder. It apparently revealed that Gwen had an affair with Norman Osborn and gave birth in France to twins, a girl named Sarah and a boy named Gabriel. In this version, Gwen vowed to raise them with Peter and refused Norman access, which pushed him to kill her. The twins grew to adult size within a short time, an effect of their father's goblin formula. Sarah, unmasked by Spider-Man, turned out to be "a dead ringer for Gwen." She later joined Interpol, while Gabriel became the Gray Goblin.

  The story was highly controversial for its implausibility and for clashing with Gwen's established characterization. It was eventually dismissed in the continuity as a hoax. In the "Sinister War" event of 2021, writer Nick Spencer revealed that an artificial intelligence backup copy of Harry Osborn had planned the whole thing. Norman had never fathered the twins and never had any encounter with Gwen. Harry's copy hypnotized Norman and Mary Jane Watson with help from Mysterio and the Chameleon, while Mendel Stromm built the twins in a lab to torment both Norman and Peter.

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• 7. Dead No More

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  A new Gwen clone appeared in 2013, in the "Sibling Rivalry" crossover. She joined the Jackal in capturing Superior Spider-Man and Kaine. She was sympathetic toward them, yet utterly loyal to the Jackal. When his lab caught fire, Kaine offered to save her, but she refused and was apparently consumed by the flames.

  The 2016-2017 event "Dead No More: The Clone Conspiracy," by Dan Slott and Christos Gage, went further. A flashback showed that Gwen had been conscious on the bridge and overheard the Goblin's conversation with Spider-Man. She learned Peter's secret, and was angry at him for hiding it and for his part in her father's death. That scene contradicts "Sins Past," since the Goblin calls her "just a pawn."

  In the present, Ben Reilly, acting as the Jackal II, revives her in a clone body with her soul intact. He offers to make her his business partner. She hesitates, then accepts when he shows her George Stacy, reanimated and healthier than before. A decoy version, the Earth-65 Spider-Woman, briefly stood in for her while the real Gwen was held by Kaine.

  Gwen tells Peter that she did not die hating him, but feeling betrayed. When Doctor Octopus triggers a virus that makes the revived start to decay, her father crumbles in her arms. She locks Spider-Man inside the lab and sets off an explosion to buy him time. Later, Death confirms that clones of the dead had their souls intact, so Gwen's return was a genuine resurrection.

  In the 2020 "Last Remains" storyline, the villain Kindred exhumed her body and her father's. He seated them at a dinner table with other dead people from Peter's life, including Ben Parker, Flash Thompson and Jean DeWolff. That same year Gage and artist Todd Nauck began a flashback solo miniseries, Gwen Stacy. It concluded with Giant-Size Gwen Stacy in 2022 and was collected as Gwen Stacy: Beyond Amazing in 2024.

  In Superior Spider-Man #3, Peter meets Gwen and her father in the afterlife and apologizes. Gwen says it "worked out" because they were "together." During the A.X.E.: Judgment Day event of 2022, the Celestial called the Progenitor appeared to Peter in her form. He then rewarded Peter with a brief return of the real Gwen, for one last moment together.

  The Gwenpool series by Cavan Scott and Stefano Nesi began in May 2025. In it, Weapon X resurrects Gwen as a violent assassin called X-31, with adamantium on her bones. Her severed head survived the old explosion, and the villain called the Great Architect grew a new body from it. She teams up with Peter, Kate Bishop and the ghost of Gwen Poole to stop him. She asks Peter out again, he refuses, and she passes it off as a joke. She joins the others in fighting Fin Fang Foom, planning to find a new and worthy codename.

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• 8. Many Other Gwens

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  Ultimate Spider-Man #15, dated January 2002, introduced a different Gwen as part of Brian Michael Bendis's modernized alternate continuity. She was a teenager at Peter's high school who wore punk-style clothing and had a rebellious streak. Artist Mark Bagley based her look on an early-career Madonna. Carnage killed her in issue #62, in July 2004. She came back in issue #98, in October 2006, which Bagley called "a way to rock Peter's world...again." She briefly became a new Carnage, then was restored. That universe ended in 2015, though a later Ultimate Spider-Man series, running 2024-2026, makes her Mysterio, the head of Oscorp and wife of Harry Osborn.

  The most famous alternate Gwen came from Dan Slott, who imagined a spider-powered version for the "Spider-Verse" story. He suggested the idea to editor Nick Lowe, who approached writer Jason Latour. Latour worried about bringing Gwen back to life, even in another universe, given what her death meant. Artist Robbi Rodriguez designed her. Latour told him to keep her mysterious, so that "anyone could be under that mask."

  Latour had realized he knew Gwen only as a "fridged" character, a woman killed to move a hero's plot along. He also saw a chance to represent women better in superhero comics. Spider-Gwen debuted in Edge of Spider-Verse #2 on the 17th of September 2014. In her home reality, Earth-65, she is the one bitten by the radioactive spider and becomes Spider-Woman. She also plays in a band fronted by Mary Jane Watson, called the Mary Janes.

  Her popularity led to a surprise. In June 2015, Marvel published variant covers for 20 current series, showing Gwen as other characters such as Doctor Strange, Groot and Wolverine. The cover for Deadpool's Secret Secret Wars #2 blended Gwen with Wade Wilson and was dubbed Gwenpool. Fans loved her, and Howard the Duck #1 established that her name is Gwen Poole, a fangirl from the real world transported into the Marvel Universe. An ongoing series, The Unbelievable Gwenpool, began in April 2016, and the webtoon spin-off It's Jeff! premiered in September 2021.

  Other versions are scattered across the multiverse. In House of M, Gwen survived and married Peter. In Heroes Reborn, she trained under Nighthawk and became the vigilante Nightbird. In Secret Wars: Battleworld, Mojo recruited Gwenverine, a Gwen with Wolverine's powers. In "What if Gwen Stacy had lived?" Peter jumps after her, cushions her fall and saves her, then proposes. On their wedding day, he is a fugitive.

  The creators of Spider-Man: The Animated Series excluded Gwen deliberately. They felt they could neither let her live nor include a character fated to die, so Felicia Hardy became Peter's first love. An alternate Gwen, voiced by Mary Kay Bergman, still turned up in the series finale, "Spider Wars." In The Spectacular Spider-Man, voiced by Lacey Chabert, she is a teenager with hidden feelings for Peter. At the end of that series she stays with Harry to care for him.

  In live action, Bryce Dallas Howard played her in Spider-Man 3, released in 2007. That Gwen is a model, a lab partner of Peter's and the ex-girlfriend of Eddie Brock. Emma Stone played her in The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) and its sequel (2014), working at Oscorp as an assistant to Dr. Curt Connors. The second film follows her on-and-off romance with Peter and ends with the Green Goblin killing her.

  Stone later said she would be interested in returning as a resurrected Gwen. Planned follow-ups would have had Norman Osborn turn an amnesiac Gwen into Carnage against Parker, Harry and the Sinister Six. By July 2014 development had stalled, and by early 2015 a deal to reboot the character inside the Marvel Cinematic Universe ended the franchise.

  A metalcore band named Gwen Stacy played in Indianapolis from 2004 to 2010, and announced a reunion in April 2014. The novel The Refrigerator Monologues features Paige Embry, a character based on Gwen. She narrates for a group of women in the afterlife coping with the brutal termination of their plot lines.

  The cartoon Ghost-Spider in the Marvel Rising franchise, voiced by Dove Cameron, carries a design accident. A character designer searching Google Images for Gwen Poole reference mistook an image of Poole for Gwen Stacy. That is why this Gwen has partly dyed pink hair. The alias Ghost-Spider was later adopted by Marvel Comics to distinguish her from other Spider-Women.

  Hailee Steinfeld voices Spider-Gwen in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) and Across the Spider-Verse (2023). This version saved her father but failed to save her friend Peter Parker after he became the Lizard. She is due to return in Beyond the Spider-Verse in 2027, and in a female-centered spin-off film called Spider-Woman.

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