BHOC: MARVEL TALES #99

I’d been waiting for this one, the second half of the Death of Gwen Stacy storyline, a saga that was already legendary by 1978 when I first got to read it. With Stan Lee having retired from scripting AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, incoming writer Gerry Conway and plotter and artist John Romita were looking to do something big to shake the series up. Where they landed was to kill off Peter Parker’s longtime love Gwen, and use that as the impetus to bring the saga of the Green Goblin to a conclusion as well. Needless to say, the original publication of these two issues set off a firestorm in fandom, and they definitely got people looking at and talking about AMAZING SPIDER-MAN for many months. Today, when characters get offed casually, the impact of this death may be difficult to appreciate. But Gwen was a longtime supporting character, she was important to the fundamental structure of the strip–she was the next best thing to indestructible. And that’s what made this two-parter such a revelation. Conway and Romita and penciler Gil Kane took their storytelling outside the lines, and that was electrifying to the audience.

Honestly, some of the readers of the era thought it was all a big trick, a feint, a fake-out. After the first part had seen print, they had theories that it hadn’t been Gwen at all but some manner of copy–Gwen doesn’t wake up or say a word while she’s atop that bridge, so who knows whether it was really her. This issue, though, seemed to put an end to that manner of wild speculation, as it gave every indication from front to back that this was actually happening, that it wasn’t a joke or a dream or a diversion, but stone-cold reality. Gwen’s demise and its impact on Peter Parker and his cast would be a running issue throughout the remainder of Conway’s tenure on the series–it was a prime motivator that almost everything else he did with the character sprang from.

As for this issue, it’s pretty intense from start to finish. It open mere seconds after the previous chapter, with Spider-Man holding Gwen’s lifeless body as his nemesis the Green Goblin taunts him. Spidey flies into an understandable rage and hurls himself at the Goblin, intending to kill him with his bare hands. But his rage makes the web-slinger sloppy, and the Goblin is able to slip his grip and disappear into the distance, leaving the wall-crawler’s vengeance unfulfilled. What’s more, people are gathering around Gwen’s body on the ground below, including a pair of police officers. This drives Spider-Man to anguish and he lands among them, scaring them all to back off before he breaks down over his woman’s lifeless body. Spidey was at this point wanted in connection with the murder of Gwen’s father Police Captain George Stacy, so the younger of the two cops wants to take him in.

But wanting and doing are two different things. Realizing that there’s nothing more he can do for Gwen, Spider-Man swings off, dodging shots from the cops as he goes. He switches back to his Peter Parker duds and goes to visit his friend and roommate Harry Osborn. It was Harry’s relapse into drug use that ignited the fuse that turned his father Norman back into the Green Goblin, and Peter figures he may have some clue as to where the old man is holed up. Harry is a gibbering, paranoid wreck, and Peter is casually cruel to him–he doesn’t have time to deal with Harry’s problems, he’s got a fiery thirst for revenge that he needs to quench first.

With that avenue closed off to him, Spidey swings over the Daily Bugle in the hopes that Joe Robertson will have news of either a sighting of Norman Osborn anywhere in the city or information on properties that he may own. Robbie is himself reeling from the fresh news that Gwen’s body has been found, but he’s able to get the web-slinger the information that he needs to continue his pursuit. Just then, J. Jonah Jameson enters, accusing Spider-Man of being responsible for Gwen’s death. Spidey has no patience for this, and he webs up Jonah’s mouth brutally, then swings off to confront the Green Goblin. This isn’t the wisecracking devil-may-care Spider-Man that we’re used to seeing. There’s a hard edge to his actions here.

As predicted, the Goblin is holed up in a warehouse he owns on 23rd and Ninth, and he’s sweating things a bit. Never well under any circumstance, he’s breaking down even further as he reloads his arsenal of Halloween-themed weapons. But then Spider-Man comes crashing into teh place, and what follows can barely be called a fight. it’s an absolute massacre, with the web-slinger pummeling his foe mercilessly, shrugging off his best attacks with easy. The Goblin has always been his greatest foe, but so fueled by pain and loss is Spider-Man that he tears through him like tissue paper. But as the Goblin crumples in a heap in front of him, Peter gets ahold of himself. For all of his anger, all of his pain, he isn’t a murderer, and he can’t kill even the Green Goblin.

But the Goblin has one final move left. By remote control, he summons his damaged Goblin-Glider, intending to spear Spider-Man on its jagged tip. But the wall-crawler’s spider-sense warns him in time and he dodges–only for the glider to impale the Goblin himself, pinning him against the wall. Having attained his revenge, Spider-Man feels only emptiness–and as he walks quietly away, he’s unaware of a mysterious figure who has been watching from the shadows. These MARVEL TALES reprints had fewer pages to work with than the original comics, which meant that when they reprinted stories, they had to cut pages out of them. Astonishingly, here the choice was made to delete the final page of the original tale, which I wouldn’t get to read for many years. but I’m going to let you get a look at it now.

This was the first step into transforming Mary Jane Watson into Peter Parker’s new love interest, a process that would play out over the next year or so. Conway has indicated that he always found MJ to be a lot more fun and interesting than Gwen was, so his preference was to move her to center stage. This very elegant final story moment was the beginning of that, an indication that MJ could have more depth and soul than her party girl facade would seem to indicate. I can understand why it was among the pages cut from this MARVEL TALES reprint, as it isn’t absolutely necessary to the story. But it is really important as to the overall direction of the series.