Spider-Man: One More Day is one in every of the most controversial tales ever advised about the character. Nonetheless, it seems the authentic draft would’ve been much more controversial.
The 2007 storyline ended with the demon Mephisto rewriting the timeline in order that Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson have been by no means married. This was completed as a part of a Faustian cut price to save Aunt Could’s life. The ultimate chapter of the storyline featured the return of Harry Osborn, a supporting character who had been useless for years. However Harry wasn’t the solely character Marvel needed to bring back.
“We needed to bring in some solid members, and [Gwen Stacy] was a type of solid members that I remembered fondly as a child,” former Marvel editor-in-chief and One Extra Day penciler Joe Quesada advised me in a 2010 interview for Spider-Man Crawlspace. “Each [James Michael Straczynski] and myself have been vehement; we needed to bring her back. We handed this piece of paper round a room of fifty creatives, and we put Gwen, and no Gwen. And we requested folks anonymously to test one field. By the time it obtained back to me, bringing Gwen back had received out by one vote. One single vote. So, we have been going to bring Gwen back.”
This vote was held in 2006 as Marvel was planning the subsequent part of Spider-Man books, which included One Extra Day and their three-times-a-month publishing initiative Model New Day. Talking with Popverse for a Model New Day oral historical past article, Spider-Man editor Tom Brevoort recollects his response to Marvel’s plans for Gwen Stacy
“We knew that after we have been going to inherit the titles, a few issues have been in place,” Brevoort says. “Spider-Man wasn’t going to be married anymore. After which, as a part of that story, Joe and Joe Straczynski had supposed to bring back Harry Osborn. And there was some back and forth at the time of, ‘Are they going to bring back Gwen Stacy?’ I sort of put my thumb on the scale and mentioned, ‘No, do not try this. That is unhealthy.’”
As Quesada recounts, Brevoort approached him a number of months after the vote and satisfied him to nix their plans to increase Gwen from the grave.
“Tom walked into my workplace, closed the door, and he mentioned, ‘It’s a mistake. Bringing Gwen back is a mistake,’” Quesada says. “We talked about it. Considered one of the issues that he mentioned that was poignant was she’s been useless longer than she was alive in the comedian books. So, the solely folks that basically bear in mind her with that kind of affection are followers which have been studying the books for that lengthy a time frame. So, he questioned me and mentioned, is it one thing that you really want to bring back since you emotionally like the character or is it actually going to be good for the solid?”
Wanting back, Quesada admits that Gwen’s revival wouldn’t have made sense.
“It felt slightly too magical to bring her back. It felt slightly too heavy-handed by Mephisto,” Quesada says.
Whereas the foremost continuity model of Gwen Stacy continues to be useless, that hasn’t stopped Marvel from utilizing doppelgangers of the character, resembling Spider-Gwen. In reality, thanks to the Spider-Verse films and the preschool present Spidey and His Amazing Friends, Spider-Gwen might be larger in the public consciousness than the authentic Gwen ever was.
Would which have nonetheless occurred if One Extra Day had revived Gwen? It’s onerous to say, however for the time being, the authentic Gwen stays in the grave. It simply goes to present you {that a} passionate speech from an editor is typically extra highly effective than a secret poll.