Gwens Corruption

and How I Came to Know Gwen

Gwen Stacy went from being a paragon of virtue and womanly love to an abject failure and a fool in the Sins Past storyline.

I was introduced to Gwen Stacy back in the 70s in highschool when a friend of mine named Herman brought some of his Amazing Spiderman comics to school. He had a remarkable collection. I read them in study hall often and with growing enthusiasm. I was hooked.

The girl named Mary Jane was one of these "hip chicks" like we had around school, and they avoided us nerds like anthrax. For that reason I didn't care all that much for Mary Jane. Also Stan Lee's "Dig it, man" beatnick type dialog that they spoke left me cold. I just figured at the time that it was the way Yankee teens spoke. Oh well, live and learn.

Gwen was more like the girls in my high school class. She was pretty, and brainy. This drew me to like her more. When she got stuck on Peter Parker like glue, this really let me like her. Parker was, after all, a nerdy guy the jocks didn't like. I was in that boat myself, even though I played football and lots of other sports, I was still in the Nerd clique. Herman, especially, hated the jocks. I'm not sure he liked Gwen as much as I did.

Gwen represented the type of girl both Herman and I could like, though. She began as competition for Mary Jane, and then began to dress like M.J. For a while there, she even had an identical hair style. When she added the trademark hairband and belt length hair, she was complete as a different individual from M.J. She worried so much about Pete that she was often driven to tears in the comic, but that she loved him beyond any other man was shown by the fact that she'd defend him from those who insulted him. Once she even slapped a guy, and another time warned M.J. when she insulted him to her face at a birthday party and Pete showed up dressed as Spiderman and revealed himself to her. Gwen was an intensly loyal girl, the type most guys could only dream about.

Gwens love drove her to her death. Upon a return from Europe, she was involved with trying to get Harry Osborne to a hospital after his bad LSD trip. Norman Osborne refused, but they did what they could.

Gwen had been to Europe at this time, and Herman would quip that she "was gonna have a little spidey". Herman's view of women is more jaded than mine, and more cynical. He also had a lot more girlfriends than I did. There was no way in his mind a girl like Gwen could know Pete for as long as she did, with such intensity, and remain sexually pure. I just shrugged it off and put it down to his being funny, or trying to get my goat.

When Gwen was killed, I was horrified. This didn't make sense, and it opened a wellspring of "everybody dies" in the school comics I did for my friends. Herman and I even did a Gwen Stacy Memorial Tournament in the dice based basketball game he and I played.

By issue 121, Gwen was now a symbol of 'what might have been'. Her love was pure, chaste, and honest. Her loyalty unquestioned. Her devotion legendary. She had brains, good looks, and a future bright and rewarding calling to her before her death. Good lord, what a woman she was!

For over 30 years this stood as a standard for the Gwen Stacy model. Her fans, including me, loved her always for what she was. The good girl who loved the nerd no matter what, and defended him from his detractors. She was killed because Peter Parker loved her, honestly and pure.

Then, in stepped J. Michael Straczynski.

Happily trolling about a bookstore in search of reading material, I picked up issue 514. I hadn't seen a spidey book in something like 10 years that I felt like buying, but this had Gwen in it, and she was drawn quite remarkably well! I read it and felt my blood go to my feet. What was this?

I bought it and took it home. I read the thing with concern. What had happened? Who were these twins? GOOD GOD, THEY ARE GWEN'S KIDS BY NORMAN OSBORNE!

Struck dumb by this, I got on the Net and started digging, hard and deep. Prior to this my Gwen Stacy file only had a couple of pics of Gwen in it. By the time I finished my multi-week research it had close to a hundred pictures and several sub-files with notes and data colletcted.

What had Straczynski done!?

He had turned Gwen from what she was to all of us for three decades into something completely different.

How Gwen had changed! She was now a failure, for her own fault. She wasn't loyal anymore. Her love wasn't pure anymore. She had cheated on the man she loved, and gave her virginity to a man who was a vile evil monster and the hated enemy of the one man who loved her above all else. She kept this secret, and the secret of her subsequent pregnancy from Peter and all her friends. Rather than seek help from her friends, she fled to Europe. She had two bastard children. She had violated a trust and sullied her honor. When she realized that Norman was not "all there" she denied him both her love and the children. She was going to turn to Peter and go to him, knowing his devotion to her was unquestioned, and he'd take her kids and all.

True, I'd do the same thing, and for a girl I once loved I would do it today. I can see this line of reasoning, but....

Peter Parker was HER SECOND CHOICE! She only considered Norman unfit after she discovered what an S.O.B. he was! Her loyalty and love to Peter was a sham! She was now untrustworthy. And in many ways! 

Because she now had two kids to take care of it was next to impossible for her to complete her college education. That was out the window. Now her intelligence had gone to waste as well. Yet another Gwen Stacy failure.

Then, when she came back from Europe, she spent so much time dealing with Harry's bad trip that she neglected to tell Peter or anyone else. Had M.J. not been eavesdropping, NOBODY would have known in her circle of friends. She didn't trust her friends enough to tell them, and didn't even trust Peter enough to confront him with her disloyaty.

Who was this woman? It is not the Gwen Stacy I see smiling in the pictures of the past issues. The one who walked in the park with Peter, loved him unquestionably, and defended him without hesitation. This woman is a stupid, untrusting, untrustworthy, idiot who had her first and only sex with the father of her boyfriends best friend. Then she had his children, and didn't tell anybody! The mind boggles.

Then, on the bridge of death, Gwen is killed not because she was Pete's girl friend. No, she is killed because Norman wanted his paramour dead! She was between him and his bastards, so Gwen had to die.

She did not die for love anymore. Even that was gone now.

EVERYTHING that made up Gwen Stacy was gone. Destroyed. Ruined. J.M.S. himself said that this was the same Gwen we always knew in the past. Not so, me boyo. The radical change in her character eleminated everything she once stood for. Yeah, yeah, she stood up to Norman and denied him his kids. That took guts, just like the old Gwen. Never mind Peter was the second choice. No, the character was now not only dead, but ruined as well.

Fans the world over are hurt by this. Gwen meant a lot to us. Many of us wanted her back, if only so she wouldn't "stay dead". She was too good, too sweet, too honest caring and loving to end like that. And now, we discover, she wasn't all that good, sweet, honest or caring after all. Now, in the flashbacks, every time she looks at Pete and says "I love you" it rings hollow and faithless.

She is now a corrupted icon. Damn you Straczynski!