What the Hell Simply Occurred to Spider-Gwen?

Marvel Comics is not any stranger to a bit of brand synergy and consolidation. The extra characters get away into the mainstream past the readership of comics, the extra their comics counterparts are sanded down and chopped and altered to finally higher accommodate the potential for audiences who’re conscious of them by way of adaptation to go to the comics and discover acquainted fare. This has been especially true because the shadow of the MCU grew ever bigger, reshaping characters and realigning destinies the nearer somebody got here to elevation right into a film or TV present. However now the corporate is bringing that realignment to bear on considered one of its most profitable characters in latest reminiscence… and making it an entire bizarre mess within the course of.

The present quantity of Stephanie Phillips, Von Randal, and Matt Milla’s Spider-Gwen: Ghost Spider wrapped up with its fifteenth problem this week, forward of an “All-New” relaunch of the sequence subsequent month. Over the course of the present quantity, Gwen vacated her unique dwelling actuality, Earth-65, after a variant of Loki, King Loki, got here there in an try to steal a Cosmic Dice. Inadvertently fusing with the relic herself, Gwen has discovered herself now residing in Marvel’s prime actuality, trying to safeguard the Dice’s existence whereas additionally reckoning with bonding with its cosmic, reality-warping energy.

Having handled these struggles after a dialog with Phoenix, the ultimate problem sees Gwen duke it out with King Loki as soon as and for all. However in the intervening time of her seeming defeat, Gwen finds herself inside a mindscape speaking with the Cosmic Dice itself… within the type of herself, trying awfully like Gwen’s Earth-616 counterpart as she appeared within the iconic Amazing Spider-Man #121, the difficulty of her loss of life by the hands of the Inexperienced Goblin. The Dice argues that Gwen ought to use its powers to rewrite her ending, and he or she does so, toppling Loki, resulting in his arrest by the hands of the TVA, and even altering the destiny of her rival-potential love curiosity Fabian LaMuerto, the newest Black Tarantula, saving him from sure loss of life.

Besides Gwen argues that this isn’t an finish for herself, however a brand new starting. In a flash of sunshine, the difficulty climaxes with a quick epilogue from incoming All-New Spider-Gwen: Ghost Spider artist Paolo Villanelli. Seemingly having separated herself from the Cosmic Dice within the course of, Gwen wakes up in her bed room, nonetheless in Earth-616: now, as Marvel had beforehand teased can be the case, her new established order. From what little we are able to inform, she’s been there for some time—and has seemingly had her unique powers restored for good, having had symbiote-bonded powers for the perfect a part of a decade after her unique powers had been stolen from her. However that’s not all: now her father, Captain George Stacy, resides protected and sound in Earth-616 as properly.

Very similar to his 616 counterpart—who has been lifeless for over half a century, exterior of a quick clone-induced resurrection during Clone Conspiracy—the Dice-reworked George is now as soon as once more a police officer, and no matter warping Gwen did has managed to handwave the truth that there did was a Gwen and George Stacy (nevertheless way back they perished in Marvel’s sliding timescale) who existed on this actuality and have been very lifeless for a very very long time.

Properly, principally. Earlier this yr Marvel introduced that it might be resurrecting the original Gwen Stacy because the id of a brand new, violent tackle Gwenpool. Starting again in Might, the latest Gwenpool sequence revealed that Earth-616’s Gwen had been resurrected as X-31, the newest agent of the Weapon X program, and had even seemingly killed the unique Gwenpool (that’s Gwendolyn Poole, earlier than you get confused on the present Gwen-quotient). So with Spider-Gwen’s cosmic retconning, now each she and her prime-earth self are working round in Earth-616 on the similar time, nonetheless as separate folks.

It’s a spectacularly bizarre reset for the character, one which brings her again in step with a model of Spider-Gwen that a lot of the public would pay attention to—i.e., the model we all know by way of the Spider-Verse movies, itself based mostly on Spider-Gwen’s earliest comedian incarnations a decade in the past—whereas additionally concurrently successfully wiping a part of that recognizable id: that she is a personality from throughout the multiverse and exists in a separate actuality. After all, that is removed from the primary time Marvel’s achieved this, particularly with Spider-characters. Miles Morales efficiently jumped over to current in Earth-616 after the destruction of the Final Universe throughout Secret Wars—and even bought to boost the query of no matter occurred to the Miles Morales of Earth-616 in the course of the 2017 sequence Spider-Males II (the reply is, after all, bizarre).

Now largely faraway from the multiversal idea, Spider-Gwen is only one Spider among the many many wall-crawling their manner by way of Earth-616. Simply how Peter will react, or the presently alive-again unique Gwen, stays to be seen. Standing quos are ephemeral in comics; when loss of life is a revolving door, it’s exhausting to ever actually definitively say what will probably be a “new regular” for longer than a couple of years. There’s each probability that, in some unspecified time in the future once more, Gwen may return to her dwelling actuality (possibly in time for, say, Beyond the Spider-Verse in 2027).

Time will inform simply what the purpose of this established order shift was actually for. Marvel is heralding subsequent month’s All-New relaunch as Spider-Gwen’s “Model New Day.” Given the Peter Parker of the MCU is on the precipice of his own, maybe it wouldn’t be too shocking if the MCU was making ready its personal technique to introduce another Spider-hero, and the comics had been simply laying the groundwork slightly early.

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