Finding Gwen Stacy part 0.5: Introduction

What do Gwen Stacy and Scans Daily have in common?

They’re both dead. Ironically enough both have had clones and imitators show up since their demise.

This blog series will ask and attempt to answer the question “Who is Gwen Stacy”. She is best known for dying. The story where she met her tragic end has gone down in comic history and is still talked about today. It was a controversial move that seemed to overshadow the character herself. Her death has been reprinted many times in many forms. Her character has not been as fortunate.

Oh sure, we get flashbacks and reprints of her death, but very few people saw what her character was like as a live person, and that has led to the misperceptions on her character. I was surprised to discover how many of Spider-Man’s creators were even quoted on some of these. Some things we will explore are..

* Were Gwen and Peter really this perfect couple that would’ve been married if not for Norman murdering her?
* Who was Gwen REALLY closest with (in her own words, the answer is shocking)?
* What role did Mary Jane play? Were the two really best friends as the flashbacks always said? This “Betty/Veronica’ era that all the writers and editors talk about, did it exist?
*The first time MJ was written out of the Spiderverse. Was it the Brand New Day? The Mackie era? After the Wolfman

run? Try the Lee/Romita era!

* Why Flash and Peter really became friends.

* What did the Gwen clone ultimately reveal about Gwen’s character?

*Gwen and the Osborns. Did Sins Past make sense? Was she really best friends with Harry like some speculated?
* Which interpretation of Gwen is closest? The animated series? The movie? * Why is Gwen still so important?

All this and plenty of Silver Age scans!

The series I am about to post formerly had it’s home on Scans Daily, but that comic book community is now gone. I am not going to play the blame game like some people have. I am grateful for all the funny comic discussion I had on the site.

Before Scans Daily, this series was originally going to be developed for the famous http://www.samruby.com page. It’s founder Eric was a great help in the early genesis of his series. I’m not sure JR the Madgoblin remembers, but

he also was gave a big hand in the early writings.

Eventually I decided to just give this it’s own website, but it quickly got neglected and never updated. That was about five years ago when Sins Past was just starting. At that point the series was called “Julio’s Take On Gwen”. While I am known as Bertone, for reasons too long and complicated to explain here, my old internet secret identity was Julio Barone.

Eventually I started posting on the Livejournal comic community Scans Daily. As stated in the start of this entry, it’s now dead. I did a well recieved retrospective series on Lyja the Skrull and all of Silver Age Lois’s trips down the aisle (there were more than you’d think). I figured it was time to bring Gwen back out to play. I finished about 95 percent of the series on Scans Daily and enjoyed the response I got. With Scans Daily now gone, I figured the Crawl Space would be a better home for this series than internet limbo.Thank you Brad for hosting these.

If you were one of the people who read this on Scans Daily I hope you enjoy reading it again. If you haven’t seen it before, I hope you like what you see.

First off, I will state, I am not JR. I cannot try to be and any JR influence in these writings stems from the fact that I’ve always enjoyed his blogs and essays.

The game plan is posting these every Monday and Friday starting tomorrow. We’re going to start off with Steve Ditko’s Gwen so be sure to check it out!