spider-man girlfriends

In an ongoing poll on CHRefugee on the subject of Spider-man's best girlfriend, Gwen Stacy has been losing by a wide margin to Mary Jane Watson.

I'm surprised. Her death was one of those moments that defines Spider-man, as much as his Uncle Ben's death. It was so poignant they even paid homage to it in the "Spider-man" movie, when the Green Goblin threatened to throw Mary Jane off the Brooklyn Bridge.

In terms of literary value and defining the character of Spider-man, Gwen Stacy is far superior to Mary Jane, even though Parker married MJ. Think about it: The depths of Gwen's personality and character were never fully explored, and neither was her relationship with Peter, because the Green Goblin killed her. (There was an unusually well-written "What If?" in which they explored what would have happened if Gwen had survived the fall, but that's beside the point.)

In death, Gwen became every bit as defining to Spider-man as Uncle Ben. In the case of Uncle Ben, the lesson Peter Parker learned was the cliched great-power-great-responsibility-yada-yada-yada lesson. Uncle Ben's death carried an important lesson: If you fail to do the right thing, the consequences can be severe. Good people even can die.

Gwen Stacy's death carried a far more brutal lesson. The Green Goblin took her captive precisely because Peter had been doing the right thing. All through high school, and into college, he had been stopping petty criminals and he had been fighting supervillains. The Goblin took her to get at Peter, and although he did everything he could to save her, she died. The goblin killed her for no other reason than because she happened to be Spider-man's girlfriend, and she didn't even know it. The lesson here? You can do the right thing, and people will still die.

In the 20-odd continuity years since her death, she's continued to haunt Parker in a way his Uncle Ben never could, as the innocents he exposes to danger just by being close to people. That's a theme they picked up on in the movie. Even though he saves Mary Jane from the Gwen Stacy fate in a more or less identical situation, he still withdraws from her at the end of the movie because he doesn't want to endanger her. It was a brilliant decision on the part of the filmmakers, even as audience members see Mary Jane realize why Peter is backing away from her.

In my mind, Gwen Stacy towers over Mary Jane precisely because her death was so defining for Spider-man and because her character potential can never be fully realized, while in many ways they've long since exhausted Mary Jane's, at least as long as they insist on keeping her and Peter as childless 20-somethings who have been married an indeterminate but relatively short period.