Marvel Just Needs to Let Gwen Stacy Stay Dead

Marvel‘s treatment of Spider-Man in the 21st century is a strange story. For some reason, Marvel decided to throw out the more mature, married Spider-Man that several generations of fans grew up with and made him into a weirdly young sadsack loser, regressing the character to an earlier version. This regression brought back the prominence of a character that had been dead since the early ’70s: Gwen Stacy. Gwen was Peter Parker’s first love and she played a major role in his stories; she’s a very important character in the history of Spider-Man. Her death made a huge impact on the character’s world, one that gave Spider-Man a new tragedy to mourn.

Gwen Stacy was a character that was never coming back, but it was obvious that everyone behind the scenes at Marvel wanted to resurrect Gwen Stacy. Marvel’s editorial staff is filled with older people who grew up with Peter and Gwen, who indoctrinated their younger editors into their way of seeing Spider-Man. Soon, we got the first Gwen variant: Spider-Gwen. This always felt like a slippery slope and more Gwens started popping up. Now, we’re in a place where a complete Gwen Stacy resurrection is on the way. However, there’s no need for all of these Gwens; we don’t need any Gwens.

Gwen Stacy Is the Spider-Man Girlfriend of an Older Generation and Marvel Can’t Change That

I started reading Spider-Man comics in the early ’90s, and the Spider-Man I found was, in my learned opinion of the time, in his late 20s and married. Things weren’t perfect for him — being Spider-Man was hard and money was tight. There were problems with Mary Jane. However, there was a sense of contentment with this Spider-Man that made me feel good. It gave nerdy little me hope. That was my Spider-Man and the Spider-Man of everyone who started reading comics between 1987 and 2007. There are a lot of Spider-Man fans just like me who never grew up with Gwen Stacy. We knew who she was and why she was important, but the closest we got was a backup to The Amazing Spider-Man #400 called “I Remember Gwen,” a story where Mary Jane thought about the life and death of her old friend. This story showed Gwen not as the perfect blonde princess, but kind of a bad person to Peter and everyone else. This was Gwen Stacy to us.

Marvel editorial is a different story. The Marvel editorial staff was full of older fans who had started reading Spider-Man comics when Gwen Stacy was around. They missed the Spider-Man they grew up with, but sales weren’t selling badly enough to get rid of Peter’s marriage to Mary Jane. The idea of ending the marriage was constantly floating around the Spider-Man offices through the ’80s and ’90s, but it wouldn’t be until the Quesada/Brevoort/Alonso regime of Marvel in the late ’00s that Marvel would pull the trigger on the end of the marriage.

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It was honestly only a matter of time before Gwen Stacy was actually going to be resurrected after the big changes wrought by One More Day. They tested the market with characters like Spider-Gwen and Gwenpool, doing their best to ingratiate Gwen Stacy with an entirely new audience. There have been so many Gwen Stacy stories in the nearly 20 years since One More Day and all of them felt like test runs to fans who have already been angered by Marvel’s editorial’s insistence on Gwen Stacy as the one true Spider-Man love.

The tragedy of Gwen Stacy — a woman whose life was ruined by her relationship with Peter Parker, one that actually wasn’t all that happy towards the end — is much more important to Spider-Man’s story than Gwen Stacy in the flesh. Who is Gwen Stacy in 2025? How is this character going to be changed to work in the current Marvel Universe? A large amount of Marvel fans — basically everyone reading The Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 2) — have no love for Gwen Stacy. We don’t want her back, because we have no connection with her as anything but a monument to tragedy in Spider-Man’s life. This is the best use for Gwen Stacy, at least in the mainline universe. Marvel will never quit their Gwen Stacy addiction, apparently, but they definitely should.

Gwen Stacy Is Better in the Ground

There is no modern Spider-Man without the death of Gwen Stacy. It’s a moment that is indelibly stamped onto the character of Spider-Man. It informed everything he did in the years to come and created a new version of Spider-Man. It’s a formative moment, and that’s where it needs to stay. Gwen Stacy, not Spider-Gwen or Gwenpool, is a character that most fans have never read before. Gwen is a relic.

One can go back through the history of The Amazing Spider-Man and see that the rosy view of Gwen Stacy is actually false; she’s always been of more use to Spider-Man as a sacrifice than anything else. It would be different if the fans had read Gwen Stacy and Peter Parker mainline books. Almost everyone reading comics haven’t. There’s no reason to bring back Gwen Stacy, except to give some older editors back their childhood crush.

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