With the release of Spider-Gwen #23 today (which I unfortunately can’t read yet due to having no comic shops nearby anymore, but it’ll arrive in the mail soon) I thought next week I’d write about this current Spider-Gwen story arc and my thoughts, including the latest issue. But today is Comic Book Wednesday and thus I feel a duty to discuss comic book news, so I’ll move my plan up a little and discuss, at last, the single greatest thing Marvel are putting out at the moment: Spider-Gwen.
Those of you who know me well know that this is by far and away my favourite comic out right now. Nothing else comes close to it in terms of the sheer enjoyment I get from every issue. It’s like being a kid again when I sit down to read it. For those of you not in the know who are wondering what the hell this blog even is, let me explain quickly a little about the character, a little about my love of her and how that came about, and then tell you why I think Marvel needs to work to make Gwen a flagship character moving forward (on certain conditions, of course).
What Is Spider-Gwen?
That could well be your first question if you’re new to the comic. “Spider-Gwen” is the nickname given to a character created for a Spider-Man mega event a few years ago named Spider-Verse. The concept of the story, without going into too much detail, was that different “Spider-Men” from different worlds and different timelines (and even a few from the same timeline, but at different points in it) were forced to team up to stop a threat so enormous that it threatened every Spider-Man across the multi-verse. One Spider-Man alone wouldn’t be good enough to stop it. Even a ragtag band wouldn’t be enough. This was a threat so huge it needed as many of them as they could put together. And put together Spider-Men they did. Of course, the team was predominantly led by the Peter Parker from the main Marvel continuity (which will always be Earth-616, no matter how many editors try to tell us otherwise). Why wouldn’t it be? Well, there’s a lot of reasons, but I’ll get to those. First, let’s talk about the Spider-Men involved.
Amongst those that were recruited were Spider-Man 2099 (a regular in his own series), the Scarlet Spider (a clone of the original Spider-Man, also known as Kaine), Spider-Girl (May “Mayday” Parker, a character who’s own series spanned over 100 issues, and who was a future daughter of Peter Parker and Mary Jane), Spider-Man Noir (a character created for the Noir event which reimagined classic Marvel characters), Spider-Ham (a cartoon version of Spider-Man who’s a pig), and Superior Spider-Man (Peter Parker from the main continuity who, at the time, had switched personalities with Doctor Octopus). To launch the event properly, along with reminding us of all kinds of “classic” Spider-Man characters, the folks at Marvel published a build-up series named “Edge of the Spider-Verse” which featured new imaginings of Spider-Man from across the multiverse. Well, one character took the reading audience by storm. That character was “Spider-Woman” from Earth-65, an earth where the concept was that it wasn’t Peter Parker who’d been bitten by a radioactive spider and become Spider-Man, but rather Gwen Stacy who’d been bitten by a radioactive spider, and thus become Spider-Woman. However, due to the fact that there was the actual mainstream Spider-Woman involved, and a few others claiming that title, she was nicknamed “Spider-Gwen”. And thus, history was made…
So, What’s Her Deal?
I don’t think Marvel intended her to be much more than just a throwaway character like so many of the other characters in the event. It seemed, if anything, that they were pushing a new mainstream character at the time, Cindy Moon, aka Silk, but the fans took to this version of Gwen Stacy and soon enough she had her own series debuting, to some serious interest by fans (including me). Why would she not? The original premise of the character is as simple as it sounds. In this world, Peter Parker was never bitten by a spider and never became Spider-Man. Instead, Gwen Stacy was. She’s still a teenager in the series, her father is still the chief of police (when the series begins at least), but so much about this series differs from the mainstream Marvel universe and honestly, that’s one of its greatest selling points. This is NOT a lame Spider-Man rip off, featuring a different person fighting all the same villains as Peter Parker always has. This isn’t even a reimagining ala Ultimate Spider-Man, which still followed the same basic rules as the main Marvel continuity, with a few updates and tweaks. This is a reimagining where NOTHING is the same as the main Marvel continuity. And that’s part of what makes this series so incredible.
Gwen’s story doesn’t start at the beginning. We’ve never witnessed her bit by the spider. She doesn’t have an uncle who died and told her about great responsibility coming with great power, or any variation thereof. Gwen’s story picks up part of the way in when we’re first introduced to her. We jump straight into her action as she’s coming to terms with a major loss in her life, a loss that she’s accused of causing. That loss is the death of Peter Parker. Who was this version of Peter Parker? He shared similarities with the original. He was a high school geek who was picked on by the cool kids. Unlike the original he never got that spider-bite to change his life though. Instead he wanted to be like Spider-Woman, so he experimented on himself, using work begun by Dr Curt Connors, and he became The Lizard. During the high-school prom, where he is bullied once more, he turned into the Lizard and attacked some of the kids, causing Gwen to suit up to fight him. She wasn’t a superhero at this stage, she was a minor celebrity – a masked girl with incredible powers – and the fight changed her life forever, not least of all because the formula that changed Peter into the Lizard also caused his death during the fight as Gwen pushed him too far. When he died, he returned to his normal form, with no evidence that he WAS the Lizard who’d terrorised the prom, and leaving Spider-Woman literally red-handed holding the body of one of those dearest to her. He died telling her he just wanted to be “special” like her. So naturally, in any world with J Jonah Jameson in it, the blame for his death was placed solely on her, the “masked menace”, and who else was put in charge of catching Spider-Woman than the chief of police, George Stacy?
This is the concept that we arrive having been told like it’s the “story so far”. And if that sounds like an interesting new take on a person with Spider-Man-like powers then everything from there only gets better. By day Gwen is part of a band, playing the drums in a band named “The Mary Janes”, with their conceited lead singer, Mary Jane Watson (because hey, remember the old days when MJ was a conceited party girl, before the Earth-616 version of Gwen died and Mary Jane’s whole personality changed?). By night she’s the masked Spider-Woman, trying to do just a little to make up for the tremendous loss that she’s suffered with Peter dying, and blaming herself for his death. And this world doesn’t feature weird rehashes of the normal Spider-Man rogue’s gallery. It features new takes on so many of them. It features the Kingpin, of course, but in this world Wilson Fisk is in prison – put there by George Stacy, no less – and his replacement at the top of the crime world is his lawyer, the new Kingpin of Crime, Matthew Murdock. Yep, “Daredevil” is the biggest villain going. It features a large assassin named Aleksei Sytsevich (no big grey rhino suit this time) who’s one of Murdock’s hired guns. It features another cop, the troubled detective (and ultimately George Stacy’s replacement as chief of police) Frank Castle (yep, the Punisher… only he’s not the Punisher, presumably because in this world his family never died). And, amongst the other rogues in Gwen’s world, are a reimagined Kraven the Hunter, former high-school friend Harry Osborn, who also takes the Lizard formula in an attempt to kill Spider-Woman for killing his friend Peter Parker, and a crime organisation known as S.I.L.K., led by this reality’s Cindy Moon.
Best of all, unlike so many of the other Spider-Man variations we’ve gotten over the years, this version doesn’t feature the traditional Spider-Man suit or even the traditional blue/red Spider-Man colour scheme. Hell no, this character’s suit is white, pink and black, has a hood along with a mask, and is arguably the damn coolest looking Spider-Person costume ever put to print. There are many that say that Robbi Rodriguez’s design of the costume is one of the reasons for the character’s popularity, and if you’ve seen the images I’m sure you can tell why. The other reason however, along with the reason that this comic is so damn entertaining every month, is the writing of Jason Latour. His dialogue is at times so damn funny I can’t help but grab my phone and send photos of the panels to my friends because I’m giggling so much over it. When you accompany that with Robbi Rodriguez’s amazing artwork you get a comic that is unlike anything else Marvel are putting out, which is visually amazing and both dramatic and hilarious in equal measure, with stories where literally ANYTHING could happen, because the comic doesn’t give a damn about the main continuity. Why should it?
Why I Fell In Love With Spider-Gwen
From the first issue I read I absolutely loved this character and this comic, and there are so many different reasons for that, many of which I’ve already touched on. One thing you should know about me is that from the age of five or six I LOVED Spider-Man. He was my introduction to superheroes, watching the old animated shows Spider-Man and Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends during the summer holidays, adoring the 90’s animated show, and eventually picking up and reading every Spider-Man comic I could get my hands on. There was a period of my life where if you’d asked me anything about the character I could have told you immediately. My shelves, even now, are filled with old issues, old trades, old reprints and dozens of old figures. I thought my love for Spider-Man would never end. I especially loved the Brian Michael Bendis written, Mark Bagley drawn “Ultimate Spider-Man”, reimagining Peter Parker as a high schooler in the 2000s era, and reimaging his rogue’s gallery to update them to that era as well. Then three things happened which made me lose my love for Peter Parker, possibly forever. They were Sins Past, Brand New Day, and the “death” of Peter Parker in Ultimate Spider-Man and replacing him with Miles Morales.
I’ll start with the last one first, because it’s easiest to explain. I won’t go into the whole story, but you have to know that I grew up reading Peter Parker as Spider-Man, I loved Peter Parker as Spider-Man, and so when Peter Parker died… I didn’t want to read on. That was nothing against Miles Morales. I’ve since gone back and read some of the issues and I’ll admit I like the character. I just simply didn’t want a new Spider-Man. I liked the old one. I liked his supporting cast. I liked the stories (well, most of them). I liked many of this universes versions of the villains. So, when Peter Parker was killed off and replaced with someone new, I had no interest in continuing to read. It wasn’t “Spider-Man” I cared about, it was Peter Parker. Then, over in the main continuity, we had the diabolically horrible Sins Past – a story in which we learn that Gwen Stacy had sex with and then had the children of Normal Osborn (somehow during the normal Spider-Man continuity, which makes absolutely no sense unless she got pregnant and had kids in a two-week period) – and worse still MJ knew about it the whole time, apparently. And then we had Brand New Day, which erased the marriage between Peter Parker and Mary Jane, a marriage I’d literally grown up reading, in favour of Peter seeming “younger” by not being married. They also brought Harry Osborn back from the dead for no reason, because… why not, I guess? For the final nail in the coffin though, if I wasn’t already angry enough that they were getting rid of everything I’d grown up reading and collecting, they did so in order to have Peter save his elderly Aunt May (who’d already been killed off perfectly and incredibly emotionally once and then brought back for no reason), and he did that by literally making a deal with the devil.
Yes… that’s right. Peter Parker, my lifelong hero, made a deal with THE DEVIL in order to save an old lady who’d already died and come back once, and gave up his entire relationship with his wife to do it. That makes total sense and is DEFINITELY something that a heroic figure would do, right?
I could write for hours about everything I hate when it comes to the whole concept of One More Day/Brand New Day, and especially Sins Past, but the fact that those two stories happened so quickly together just made Peter Parker irredeemable in my eyes. I lost my lifelong love for the character because he was no longer the character I’d grown up reading about, the guy who always did the right thing no matter what it cost him. He was now, and will forever be, the guy who was willing to sell out his marriage and make a deal with the devil to get what he wants. So, I stopped reading Spider-Man comics. I still read The Avengers. I still read Fantastic Four. But I stopped with Spider-Man and I said I’d never go back. Then Marvel gave me a new beginning, a world in which this complete disaster of an editorial decision never took place, a world with a new hero (and a female one at that!) and unlimited possibilities, and best of all a version of Gwen Stacy whose legacy wasn’t butchered by horrible, horrible editorial decisions.
This comic had a fresh look. This comic had an interesting twist. This comic didn’t tell us a long, multi-issue origin just to get us to where we needed to be, it jumped straight into the action and let our imagination do the rest. This new world didn’t follow the rules of the original, and if there was a world in which Matt Murdock could be the Kingpin of Crime, Ben Grimm could just be a beat-cop (yep, there’s no Fantastic Four here either), Captain America could be a black woman (oh yeah, didn’t I mention that?), and Frank Castle could be an angry, vigilante-hunting detective, why wouldn’t I want to see what happened? The fact that there are no standard rules to this world is part of what makes it so damn entertaining. When a classic character shows up (Wolverine and Shadowcat just did, but not the versions we know and love from the X-Men since this world may not even have X-Men) it’s so damn interesting to see what the new take on them is, and to know that they don’t have to be ANYTHING like their mainstream counterpart. This comic has a sense of humour that might even surpass the greatest Spider-Man writers ever, with even some of the smaller jokes (this world features a coffee chain called Stark-Bucks, and I’m sure you can guess who runs that) being just laugh out loud funny. But this character isn’t a cliché superhero either. She doesn’t solve every fight with her fists. She doesn’t leap in and fight first and forget to ask questions at all. Hell, one of her first major confrontations with one of her at-that-point biggest villains is solved not by a huge fight but by TALKING. Yeah, it turns out female superheroes can use words just as effectively as punches. So what’s not to love?
Why Marvel Need To Invest In This Character
There’s no doubt in my mind that there’s a decent audience for our new favourite wall-crawler. Her comic may not be the biggest selling thing ever but it’s consistent in its numbers and it’s damn good in its value for money. Jason Latour is an incredible writer and, if he was willing to write it, I’d love to see a second Spider-Gwen comic come out, or a secondary comic based in the same world. We’ve already seen this world’s versions of Wolverine, Shadowcat and Captain America, all linked with this world’s version of SHIELD (which is run by Peggy Carter, yay!). We’ve also seen her team up with the mainstream versions of Spider-Woman (Jessica Drew) and Spider-Man (Miles Morales), along with crossing over into other mainstream titles (Spider-Man’s “Clone Conspiracy” and All-New Wolverine’s annual, amongst others). Could we see a superhero team in this world? If not, why not get just a secondary Spider-Gwen title, to give us more stories than just the one arc split across several months? “Sensational Spider-Gwen” or “Spectacular Spider-Gwen”, or even “Amazing Spider-Gwen”? I’d suggest dropping the reference to Gwen in the title and just calling it “Amazing Spider-Woman”, but you may end up confusing people thinking you’re referring to Jessica Drew instead. Probably easier to avoid that.
This would, of course, depend on buy-in from the original creative team (although Robbi is meant to be leaving comic books soon, which sucks because he’s an amazing artist who I want to stay), and if Jason Latour would be willing to write a secondary title with the same sense of humour and the same awesome imagination then why not launch something and see what you can do? If not a full time secondary comic then why not do what they do with Deadpool and launch a series of mini-series instead, each focusing on a different story, and perhaps even a chance to tell her origin in more detail as a result? Besides, if Peter Parker can sell two titles a month, and DC can throw out two titles a month for more than half their line, why couldn’t Marvel invest in publicising Spider-Gwen more, getting it out there, and pushing an incredible FEMALE hero, which Marvel are seriously lacking in strength in depth for. Yes, they have “Captain Marvel”, but Carol comes with her own problems and her own history, many events of which are best forgotten, and comes with a name associated forever with the original Captain Marvel (or, for DC fans, with Shazam). There are also some smaller female heroes in the Marvel comics, but if Marvel really put some effort in they could make this version of Gwen Stacy a major thing amongst the fan-base at a time when, thanks to the Wonder Woman movie and the Supergirl TV show, female superheroes are very much “in”. She’s already captured so many people’s imaginations, and has sought after statues, action figures, Pop Vinyl figures, and appearances in video games to her credit. They didn’t even need to try that hard to get her that far, and they’ve tried so very hard with other characters who’ve not taken off half as well. Why not put some more backing behind this one?
Yes, they’d have the issues when it comes to Sony owning the movie rights to Spider-Man (which I can imagine would be messy when it comes to Spider-Gwen), but they’ve already made a deal with Sony once to produce arguably the best ever Spider-Man film, so could they not negotiate with Sony again to come to some kind of arrangement for future rights to this character? With the character being what she is, in a world that’s ENTIRELY her own, and without decades of stories to bog down her continuity, Spider-Gwen is in a position that very few other exciting characters ever get to be in. She’s far more than just a gimmick character now, with her 28th issue on sale today (5 before the very weird reset in the numbering following Secret Wars, and then 23 since), and she has a story that’s both familiar while also being completely fresh. There is potential in the character for a TV show (or Netflix style series) with ease, or – with the right creative team – a real shot at a successful female movie character from Marvel. It pains me how few marketable solo female characters they have available to them, and with Spider-Gwen they have one that could have a huge appeal to so many.
Back on the idea of a second comic, or series of mini-series, and there are so many stories to tell that we haven’t had time for in the first two years to date that a series of mini-series could tell. There’s so much of her origin and earliest adventures that’s been told only in single-panel flashbacks thus far that could be expanded on. There is unlimited potential to explore the prevalence of mutants in her world, or other superheroes that haven’t come up yet. Not to mention there’s so very much we don’t know about her world’s version of SHIELD yet, or her world’s version of Captain America, that a second title would let us explore. And all of this isn’t even mentioning the fact that she currently has zero romantic interests. Her relationship with Peter Parker was never outright stated as a romantic one, her current relationship with Harry Osborn is also far from a romantic one, and while she has a very intriguing supporting cast (all hail The Mary Janes!) there’s so much potential to expand upon that as well. Ok, we’ve seen her with Miles Morales, and learned there’s a possible future where they have kids, but he’s still quite a bit younger than her at this stage and has a lot of growing up to do first. Plus, he is kind of in a whole other universe, so that makes going on dates a little difficult. Yes, this could all be done over a longer period in the monthly issues, giving us stories for decades to come… but there are already stories for decades to come with this character given the fact that we haven’t even had a true “repeat villain” yet, let alone explored the limit of reimagining’s of Earth-616 villains we could explore, or heroes, or just seeing what Jason Latour can come up with in terms of brand new villains we’ve never seen before. The potential is more than there for more Spider-Gwen in our month… Marvel just need to be willing to see the potential in it and capitalise. Just please, if they do… don’t go all Wolverine in the 90s on us, ok?