he Night Gwen Stacy died can easily be marked as a turning point in the Golden Age of comics. It was a huge shocker and to this day it remains one of the most important stories in the world of comics. The Night Gwen Stacy died was a two part story arc that was published in The Amazing Spiderman #121 – #122
The Night Gwen Stacy died synopsis
When Norman Osbourne loses his memory after a fight with Spiderman he also unknowingly hangs up his cape as The Green Goblin. Osbourne also forgets that Peter Parker is Spiderman.
While his son Harry Osbourne is fighting his drug addiction, Norman is moving through a turbulent time. His company is under financial pressure and combined with his parental grief over Harry’s condition, he suffers a mental breakdown. Remembering he was once The Green Goblin, Norman kidnaps Peter Parker’s girlfriend Gwen Stacy. The Green Goblin lures Spiderman to the Brooklyn Bridge and the two fight. The Green Goblin hurls Gwen Stacy off the bridge. Spiderman tries to save her by shooting a web to her legs but then quickly realizes she is death. Whether she died because of his web or if she has died before he shot it, Spiderman blames himself for Gwen’s death.
In the next issue, Spiderman tracks down The Green Goblin to a warehouse and the two of them fight again. Spiderman wants to kill him but quickly realizes that he can’t bring himself to do it. While he stands over a defeated Green Goblin, the Goblin takes advantage of the situation and remotely controls his glider to try to kill Spiderman. Spiderman, warned by his spider sense, ducks and the glider impales The Green Goblin and kills him.
Later when Spiderman assumes his civilian identity he goes home to find a grieving Mary Jane Watson, a close friend of Gwen. The two find comfort in each other’s arms, grieving the loss of their friend Gwen Stacy.
That controversial snap
The snap that is depicted on the comicbook panel meant the death of Gwen Stacy. However fans argued for a long time that it was the shock of getting thrown off the bridge along with the stress of being abducted actually did it.
However 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.”
The lasting impact of Gwen Stacy’s death
The night Gwen Stacy died has a lasting impact on the comicbook community. Before the comic was published, people never died. Let alone the superhero’s lover. At the time, a superhero only failed as part of their origin story. Like Spiderman and Uncle Ben. Batman and his parents and Superman not only losing his parents but an entire planet.
The lasting impact of is still noticed today. Spiderman still refers to her death as his biggest failure in recent comics.
Her death also meant the end of the Silver Age of comics and the start of the Bronze Age of comics. The Bronze Age created stories that were darker and grittier.
The story has been adapted for several comics and movies. In the movie Spiderman from 2002 , it is not Gwen but Mary Jane who gets thrown off but in this case Spiderman saves her and fights the Goblin after that. The Goblin dies the same way he did in the movies.
In The Amazing Spiderman 2 from 2014, Gwen Stacy is thrown off a clock-tower and Spiderman also strands a web. The way she dies however is just as ambiguous as it is in the comics. The clock stops at exactly 1:21. A reference to the comics.
Behind the scenes of The night Gwen Stacy died
Stan Lee, co-creator of both Spider-Man and Gwen Stacy, recounted that Amazing Spider-Man writer Gerry Conway, editor Roy Thomas, and inker John Romita Sr. came up with the idea of killing Gwen Stacy, and consulted Lee about it: “… I was just getting ready to go to Europe on some sort of a business trip… to meet somebody to discuss something about Marvel. And I think I wasn’t thinking too clearly, because when they said, ‘We’d like to kill Gwen Stacy,’ I said, ‘Well, if that’s what you want to do, okay.’ All I wanted to do was get them out of the office so I could finish packing and get out of there. … and when I came back and found out that Gwen had been killed, I thought ‘Why would they do that? Why would Gerry write anything like that?’ And I had to be reminded later on that I had perhaps reluctantly or perhaps carelessly said ‘Okay’ when they asked me.”
In the comic book collection The 100 Greatest Marvels of All Time: #9-6 (Amazing Spider-Man #121 was the #6 comic), Conway explained that Gwen and Peter were a “perfect couple”, but taking that relationship to the next level (i.e. marriage or at least Peter revealing his secret identity to her) would “betray everything that Spider-Man was about”, i.e. personal tragedy and anguish as root of Peter’s life as Spider-Man. Killing Gwen Stacy was a perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: breaking up the “unfitting” relationship and reinforcing the element of personal tragedy which was, in his opinion, the essence of Spider-Man.
