Spider-Gwen
Posted: 09 May 2015, 03:11
A phenomenon that may have passed you by unless you read Spider-Man comics or follow a lot of sites that cover American comics is the unexpected return to the spotlight of Gwen Stacy. Originally the quintesential Girl in the Refridgerator, Spider-Man's girlfriend who was murdered by the Green Goblin back in the '70s to give the hero something to angst about ever since. Unlike most long-lasting characters in superhero comics she was never resurrected (though she was cloned that one time), she just hung around in Spidey's background as a reason to make him miserable.
Then last year Spider-Man did a story which featured a lot of different variations on the Spider-Man theme from different parallel universes, and one of them was a universe where it was Peter Parker who died and Gwen got the spider powers. The short solo story that introduced her was incredibly popular. A real girl band youtubed a version of a song featured in the story, and altogether it created so much buzz that Marvel took the unlikely step of listening to the fans and gave this one off character her own comic. The bizarre thing was that the same storyline had always been intended to introduce a character to be spun off into her own series, Silk, but she's been pretty much overshadowed by the unintended success of a comic that they actually ended up calling Spider-Gwen (she's actually known as Spider-Woman in the story, but Spider-Gwen was what the fans called her).
Marvel seem to have embraced their unexpected good fortune to the extent that in a couple of months they are going to run a series of Gwen-themed variant covers for many of their other titles, with Gwen taking the role of whoever the hero of that comic is, including The Ingwenable Hulk, Gwenverine, not to mention everyone in The Agwengers and the X-Gwen. I think my favourite of the designs I've seen so far has to be from the Guardians of the Galaxy spinnoff, Gwoot.
Then last year Spider-Man did a story which featured a lot of different variations on the Spider-Man theme from different parallel universes, and one of them was a universe where it was Peter Parker who died and Gwen got the spider powers. The short solo story that introduced her was incredibly popular. A real girl band youtubed a version of a song featured in the story, and altogether it created so much buzz that Marvel took the unlikely step of listening to the fans and gave this one off character her own comic. The bizarre thing was that the same storyline had always been intended to introduce a character to be spun off into her own series, Silk, but she's been pretty much overshadowed by the unintended success of a comic that they actually ended up calling Spider-Gwen (she's actually known as Spider-Woman in the story, but Spider-Gwen was what the fans called her).
Marvel seem to have embraced their unexpected good fortune to the extent that in a couple of months they are going to run a series of Gwen-themed variant covers for many of their other titles, with Gwen taking the role of whoever the hero of that comic is, including The Ingwenable Hulk, Gwenverine, not to mention everyone in The Agwengers and the X-Gwen. I think my favourite of the designs I've seen so far has to be from the Guardians of the Galaxy spinnoff, Gwoot.