Knowledge Waits is a feature where I just share some bit of comic book history that interests me. Today, we look at the many ways that the death of Gwen Stacy changed the Spider-Man mythos forever.
There are two numbers that I always find absolutely fascinating when I think about the death of Gwen Stacy and how much of an impact that event has had on both Spider-Man and, really, the comic book world as a whole. Those numbers are 20 and 11. 20 is for how old Gerry Conway was when he wrote March 1973's Amazing Spider-Man #121, which saw the death of Gwen Stacy. Eleven is noting that it had only been ELEVEN issues since Conway's official run on Amazing Spider-Man began with Amazing Spider-Man #111 (and that's including #116-118, when 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 noted once, "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."
The death of Gwen Stacy had four major effects, one a more general effect and three more specific to Spider-Man. More generally, the shocking death of a major superhero's love interest really brought home the idea that killing off major characters (especially love interests of superheroes) was a way to get loads of attention from readers, and so that particular approach has been done to death in the years since. The more Spider-Man specific changes are that the story solidified tragedy as being the heart of Spider-Man stories, it elevated Mary Jane Watson out of basically nowhere to become Spider-Man's main love interest, and it also created a sort of tent pole in the history of Spider-Man that will forever be acknowledged. I think the death aspect is an obvious one, but let's delve into the other aspects more thoroughly.
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How did the death of Gwen Stacy solidify tragedy as being central to Spider-Man's identity?
Looking back, the Spider-Man/Green Goblin rivalry is really one of Spider-Man's low points as a person. He knows that Norman Osborn is the villainous Green Goblin, but because Norman knows his secret identity as Peter Parker, Spider-Man is willing to just live and let live when Norman gets amnesia and forgets that he is the Green Goblin and forgets that he knows Spider-Man's secret identity. For a dude who goes on and on about great responsibility, that's not a very responsible decision at all, right?
It's like, "Eh, this way I don't have to actually DO anything, and it's not like he's going to regain his memory, kidnap my girlfriend and then murder her to mess with me, right? That would just be ridiculous!"
And yet that's precisely what happens in Amazing Spider-Man #121 (by Gerry Conway, Gil Kane, John Romita and Tony Mortellaro), as Norman Osborn regains his Green Goblin identity after the stress of seeing Harry in the hospital again from another drug overdose (and also some business problems). The Goblin goes to Peter Parker's apartment, now knowing his secret identity again, and finds Gwen Stacy there. Osborn takes her to the top of the George Washington Bridge (or the Brooklyn Bridge, it's kind of vague) and then knocks her off...
Damn, that "Snap" is still so harsh, right? We're really going with "Gwen Stacy's neck snapped when Spider-Man tried to save her?" For serious? The hilarious thing, of course, is that it was Green Goblin, of all people, who tried to argue that Spider-Man's webs DIDN'T snap Gwen's neck, as he mocks Spider-Man by noting that the fall itself would kill anyone (the fall would not kill most people, it's bizarrely absurd)...
Of course, this makes Spider-Man very angry, leading him to say one of the most notable lines in Spider-Man history, as he vows to basically murder Green Goblin for killing Gwen Stacy (this also reveals the title of the issue on the final page, which is a neat trick. That was unusual for the time, although Gil Kane had actually done a Green Lantern story with that same approach in the 1960s)...
This, though, goes to the idea that Conway has said a few times that this death was necessary because Spider-Man was about personal tragedy. That's the interesting thing to me, though, is that that really WASN'T the case at this point in Spider-Man's history. Yes, Spider-Man was born out of the tragedy of Uncle Ben's murder, but the book had gone past that idea for years at this point. In fact, in Amazing Spider-Man #100, it was Gwen's father, George Stacy, that is the moral center in Peter Parker's subconscious. Uncle Ben's murder just WASN'T that central of a theme to Spider-Man at this point. The drama in the character was more the general sense of "I have to be a superhero, even though being a superhero means I can't do other things." There's a certain sense of drama there, of course, but it's not a tragedy.
The death of Gwen, though, brought tragedy back to the forefront of Spider-Man's life and it has never left. Now, the idea of Peter Parker "needing" to suffer to be Spider-Man has become an almost central idea (stress almost, though, as different writers have different takes on the idea. It's a very popular theme, though, and Gwen's death solidified it all).
What was Mary Jane Watson's impact on the death of Gwen Stacy?
It seems evident that one of the reasons why Gwen Stacy was the character to die was so because Conway didn't like Gwen Stacy as Peter's love interest. He thought Mary Jane Watson was the better love interest. He once noted, "I had always felt that Mary Jane Watson was a better potential romantic foil for Peter than Gwen Stacy in my view. A more independent and fun character. Gwen seemed to be the epitome of the good girl and Mary Jane was sort of the epitome of the not-so-good girl and I thought that was more interesting."
What is interesting to me about Conway's take on Mary Jane is that you wouldn't know it from Conway's early issues, as Mary Jane is barely in the book! However, you can see from this earlier page in Amazing Spider-Man #121 that Conway's Mary Jane was MUCH different than Stan Lee's Mary Jane, as Lee was often derisive of Mary Jane and had her act almost cruel at times, while in this issue (the last time Mary Jane and Gwen Stacy would share a scene together before Gwen's death), Mary Jane is now quite introspective...
The death of Gwen elevated Mary Jane into a brand-new, central character in the Spider-Man mythos, even if writers who were fans before that point (like Denny O'Neil and Marv Wolfman) briefly tried to excise Mary Jane from the series.
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What was the importance of this event becoming a "tentpole" for Spider-Man?
Spider-Man, being a serialized character, inherently didn't spend too much time on any one moment, as that's the opposite of serialized storytelling, which is about moving forward. Obviously, the start of Spider-Man's career is always a major tentpole for the character, but that's fine, since it kicked everything off, it doesn't really change things overall.
However, a major event like the Death of Gwen Stacy suddenly becomes a "tentpole" for a character, as now here is this new thing that you will always "have" to refer back to throughout history. It's one thing to say that the murder of his Uncle Ben drove Peter Parker into becoming Spider-Man, but now you have the murder of his girlfriend, TOO.
It's such a notable thing that it gets referenced over and over and over again in the comics (like the above arc of Webspinners: Tales of Spider-Man). After all, how can it not be? Your uncle's death led you to become Spider-Man, so of course the death of your girlfriend DUE to you being Spider-Man (as Osborn kidnapped her to get at Peter) has to be this huge thing, and therefore, the serialized nature of the story has this big anchor in the middle of everything. I am not saying that that is a BAD thing, per se, but it's still a notable change to the Spider-Man mythos that will always be there, and why you see things like the current Amazing Spider-Man story arc refer to Gwen's death as some major event that all new stories must be compared to, in terms of shock value.
What a history-altering story...and all just for 20 cents in 1973!
If anyone has suggestions about interesting pieces of comic book history, feel free to drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com.
