Death of Gwen Stacy

The scene is atop the George Washington Bridge. The Green Goblin has kidnapped Gwen and left a pumpkin bomb, or “one of Goblin’s Lanterns,” atop Gwen’s handbag as a calling card for Spidey to find in his apartment.

Death Of Gwen

The stage is set, players on their marks, and Gobbie opens up:

“Spider-Man! Or should I say– Mister Parker? I have your WOMAN up here, my friend– I trust you understand what that means? …. Your presence in this world has been a source of constant Agony to me. I wish you to leave it– Permanently. Or else… Gwen Stacy Dies!”

The Green Goblin’s threat is critical to what happens next. There’s been a lot of conjecture regarding Stacy’s death; did Spidey really kill her or was she already dead by the hands of the Goblin.  Either Green Goblin’s is threatening with the truth, and Gwen is alive, or he’s lying and Gwen is already dead.  But, as we all know supervillain types are consistent in at least one area; they simply do not go through all of their insane efforts and plot twists simply to have only an empty threat to throw at the hero.

No, they have plot twists and traps, and yes plenty of lies, but the lies are there to lead the hero further into the trap. In this scenario, Spidey is already at the climax of the story, he is confronting the villain, right where Goblin wants him. Goblin wants the throw down, so he isn’t lying because it simply doesn’t help him move the plot along. It doesn’t help his cause to have Stacy already dead.

Death Of Gwen Stacy - Drugs

Why is this story so successful? It’s an awesome story for two reasons; 1) the prelude leading up to this point is socially relevant and mirrors the times with continual references of drug use, and 2) this one scene , of Gwen dying, is the nail in the coffin for Peter’s guilt. Spiderman needs Peter to wallow in pain, it’s what pushes Spiderman to continue doing the right thing, for we all know, “With great power comes the fact that if you sit on your ass or think of yourself for just one second, someone you love will die and it’s all your fault, you Shmuck!”

Early in the story Spiderman follows some cops to a scene where a black kid, “stoned right out of his mind,” is about to jump off a building.  Spidey saves the kid, hand him to the cops and for once, actually manages to show up on time for one of MJ’s Off-Broadway gig.

Drugs (pills),keep popping (no pun intended) up in the story as Harry continues to take LSD to help him through his anxiety over the whole MJ fawning over Peter thing that’s going on.  Although it’s pathetic watching Harry wallow in his drug induced jealousy, it’s nice to see Peter smack around a cheesy looking drug dealer and his two thugs while out of costume.

Fight With Dealers 1

Fight With Dealers 2

Gwen’s death set a new tone in comics where previously it would have been unthinkable to kill off such an important character, the hero’s girlfriend, but Stan took comic readers into a more mature story setting where people die and stay dead for good, leaving a wake of pain and misery in their passing. This one story is part of the transition from the Silver Age of comics to the Bronze age.

Stan Lee and Gerry Conway were the writers on board for this story line while John Romita Sr. and Gil kane did the art, which is fantastic by the way.   What’s nicely done here is how they were able to get to the poignant truth good job of naturally entwining a relevant message regarding drugs not being just a ghetto problem, into a Spidey story without getting all preachy like all of those those  socially relevant comics are put out by special interest groups to “stop smoking” or “just say no to drugs,” or “don’t talk to strangers,” or “Jesus Loves You,” or “Stop! Drop! Roll!”

Even though Norman isn’t on drugs, his transformation into the Green Goblin is what causes him to leave his troubled reality behind. Where LSD is Harry’s addiction, the Goblin is Norman’s drug of choice.  The Goblin is powerful, Norman is weak, the Goblin can fly and is free to kill, while Norman’s stock is plummeting and his son has entered a drug induced schizophrenia.

And when the Goblin bubbles to the surface, yet again, hell bent on killing Parker, it is Gwen Stacy he finds in Peter and Harry’s apartment, taking us back to the kidnapping scene again. The scene is atop the George Washington Bridge. The Green Goblin has kidnapped Gwen and left a pumpkin bomb, or “one of Goblin’s Lanterns,” atop Gwen’s handbag as a calling card for Spidey to find.

Spidey catches up to the Goblin and gets one good punch in, forcing the Goblin to plummet to the river below while he swings to where Gwen is at, atop a pillar on the bridge.  But Osborn is too quick, he reunites with his glider, flies up to Gwen just as Spidey reaches her, and knock’s her off the pillar top.

Spiderman manages to shoot off a line of webbing, hoping to “stop her fall before she hits the water!” which he manages to do, but if you look closely you can see the little “snap” right behind her neck.  This is where Gwen dies. Spiderman accidentally broke Gwen’s neck while trying to save her.

But here’s the problem. It would have been fine if Stan left it at that. But he didn’t. the next words spoken by the Goblin are criticle:

Romantic IDIOT! she was dead before your webbing reached her! A fall from that height would kill anyone—- before they struck the ground!

Romantic Idiot

Now, again, a critical moment for this could be interpreted a couple of different ways. It could mean that Gwen was actually dead by the hands of the Goblin, as seen by the first part of the statement, “she was dead before your webbing reached her!” But, Gobbie’s second sentence invalidates it by having Gwen’s death contingent on the height of the fall, “A fall from that height would kill anyone—- before they struck the ground!”

I happen to think that Stan made a mistake. I think he was under the impression that a fall from that height would kill a person through.. ohhh… I don’t know… some misconceived notion of asphyxiation while falling? It’s the only thing that can account for both sentences because they simply just do not add up. And besides, a note on the letters page of The Amazing Spider-Man #125 states: “It saddens us to say that the whiplash effect she underwent when Spidey’s webbing stopped her so suddenly was, in fact, what killed her.”

Kill You Goblin!

And, for the first time in comics, the roles are reversed. Normally we see the supervillain attempt to do “X,” a crime of some sort, his plans are unfortunately thwarted by the hero, the villain has something bad happen to him because of his foiled attempt at doing X, like going to prison, so the villain then blames (and curses) the hero while shaking fist in air.  But, this time we see the hero cursing the villain for his own actions. “You killed the woman I love! And for that, you’re going to die!”And it’s Spidey who is left shaking his fist in the air.

Goblin Dead

The one last thing that Stan got right was that Spiderman did have his vengeance. Norman does die, just like you saw in the movie, by his own hands impaled on the end of his damaged glider . As a comic reader, it gets to be quite the cliche to see contrived conflict where the villain, eg. the Joker, continue to commit crime after crime only to never be properly punished for his crimes. And deep down, we want to see some form of justice, some sort of balancing of the scales, some form of comic karma or tit-for-tat, for god’s sake, a little bit of what our parents always taught us, “what goes around comes around” in the superhero universe. Stan delivers.

Gwen is dead, but we saw justice as Norman got himself crucified on the end of his glider, so Peter is left to go on living with the guilt, a husk of a man… but there is more? With each death there is a new birth; we see MJ stepping up to the plate.

Throughout the whole story line she’s been flirting ruthlessly with Peter, and in the end he gives her her due tongue thrashing… but she doesn’t walk. As Peter crumples and goes fetal in pain, Mary Jane slowly and consciously closes the door, with her still in the room, possibly making this the first real commitment in her life to somebody other than herself. She’s choosing to be with Peter, to help fill that void that, they both feel. Yes, Tiger did hit the jackpot.

Enter MJ

The entire story is enough to make you cry.

Featuring the talents of Stan Lee, Gerry Conway, John Romita Sr. and Gil Kane.