Welcome to the 950th installment of Comic Book Legends Revealed, a column where we examine three comic book myths, rumors and legends and confirm or debunk them. In this first legend of an all-«Spider-Man’s girlfriends» installment of Comic Book Legends Revealed, we look into
I recently interviewed Cavan Scott about his upcoming Gwenpool series, which features the apparent return of Gwen Stacy to life, only as apparently as a superhuman assassin. I noted that this is actually the fiftieth anniversary of the original return of Gwen Stacy, which kicked off the original Clone Saga. Obviously, the reason why Gwen Stacy HAD to make a comeback back in 1975 is because Stan Lee freaked out when he saw the intense fan reaction to the death of Gwen Stacy in 1973’s Amazing Spdier-Man #121.
As I noted in an old Look Back on the story, it had only been ELEVEN issues since Conway’s official run on Amazing Spider-Man began with Amazing Spider-Man #111 (and that includes #116-118, while those issues were adaptations of the black and white magazine Spectacular Spider-Man #1 by John Romita and Stan Lee, so it was more like eight issues, really). So in his eleventh issue, at just 20 years old, Gerry Conway would change Spider-Man’s world forever with the death of Gwen Stacy. Of course, a lot of that came from the fact that people didn’t think comic books would be AROUND in five years, let alone fifty years. As Conway once noted, «We thought we were working in a dying business. We thought the business was gonna be gone in three or four years. We were just glad to be doing what we had wanted to do when we were kids. The idea that these stories would have life outside of the individual issues was just not in our heads.»
As noted, fan reaction was INTENSE at the time, and it has led to a number of legends over the years (like who came up with the «Snap» in the story and who was the original person they considered killing before Gwen), and one of the legends I haven’t addressed before is the MOTIVATION for killing Gwen Stacy.
What do fans believe about the reasons for Gwen Stacy being killed off?
As I noted in an old legend, John Romita and Gerry Conway discussed the death of Gwen Stacy in an excellent Dan Johnson joint interview in TwoMorrows’ Back Issue #8…
Dan Johnson: Before we discuss the death of the Green Goblin, I think we have to first touch on the death of Gwen Stacy. How did the decision come about to kill these characters off?
Gerry Conway: [Killing Gwen and then the Green Goblin] were two separate decisions. As I remember, John, I think it was originally your idea to kill Gwen Stacy…
John Romita: Well, we had decided we were going to kill somebody. The original thought that was brought to us was that Aunt May would die. I remember telling Gerry that Aunt May was too important to Peter’s secret identity for us to kill her. I know she was a pain in the neck to a lot of readers, but she was a good foil and as long as Aunt May was around, Peter was going to be a kid. I suggested that if we were going to kill somebody, it should be Gwen or Mary Jane. [This was] based on Milton Caniff’s trick. Caniff used to take very important female characters in Terry and the Pirates and knock them off regularly every four or five years. As a young kid, I was very much into Terry and the Pirates and I remember when Pat Ryan, who was the main hero, lost his girlfriend, there were people on the street the next day talking about how Raven Sherman had died. I thought, “This can’t be! I thought I was the only guy who thought of these characters as real people!” It stuck in my mind that if you’re going to kill somebody, kill somebody very important, make it a real shock.
CONWAY: Make it count.
ROMITA: That was the only suggestion I made to Gerry when we were plotting this. I thought if somebody was going to die, it should be Gwen. I thought she was so important, [the readers] imagined she would never die. I think it bears out, because 35 years later we’re still talking about it!
This, then, has led to a popular legend that the reason that Gwen was killed off was because Conway felt that Gwen was inevitably going to be Peter’s end game, romantically, and he wanted to cut that off by killing her, and elevating Mary Jane Watson to being the main love interest for Peter Parker.
What has Gerry Conway said about Gwen Stacy's chances of marrying Peter Parker?
Obviously, Conway DID want to elevate Mary Jane Watson to being the main love interest in the series, but it wasn’t because he felt that it was inevitable that Peter and Gwen would get married.
In a post shared on Tapatalk, Conway explained:
Contrary to what you may have read elsewhere, I don’t think anyone at Marvel imagined that Gwen and Peter were «bound» to get married. Gwen had only been part of the series for a few years; her relationship with Peter was weak and superficial; and none of us thought much of her as a character. (Except possibly Stan, since he kind of based her on his wife, Joan.) Killing her off was a no-brainer, since it would allow us to bring a much more interesting character, MJ, into a more prominent role in Peter’s life. As for marrying Peter to either Gwen or MJ, as far as I was concerned, that wasn’t an option, for the reasons mentioned above.
So no, as much as the Mexican comic book industry would have liked it, Spider-Man was never inevitably going to marry Gwen Stacy.
Thanks to Gerry Conway for the information!
Check Out a TV Legends Revealed
In the latest TV Legends Revealed — Did Aaron Spelling threaten to sue another Fox TV show over a Beverly Hills 90210 parody involving Brenda/Brandon making out?
Be sure to check out my Entertainment Legends Revealed for more urban legends about the world of film and TV. Plus, Pop Culture References also has some brand-new Entertainment and Sports Legends Revealeds!
Feel free to send suggestions for future comic legends to me at either cronb01@aol.com or brianc@cbr.com.
