Gwen Stacy returns! What you need to know about Marvel's Gwenpool

Marvel fans aren't new to the name Gwen Stacy: Spider-Man's first love, whose tragic death shaped his life and relationships for years and decades to come. Gwen Stacy was on the "stays dead" list of Marvel characters for around 50 years—the kind of characters whose deaths are so impactful, resurrecting them would prove a disservice to the continuity. The list used to include the likes of Bucky Barnes and Jason Todd, but nowadays, it seems only the people who died on Spider-Man actually stay dead. So no Uncle Ben, no Captain Stacy, and no Gwen.

Sure, we'll give her an alternate universe revival in the form of Ghost-Spider, but an Earth-616 restoration? Unlikely, right? Until now!

Before we can go forward, we have to move back. To Gwenpool.

Gwenpool's origins in Marvel Comics, explained

Back when Spider-Gwen, or "Ghost Spider," was being introduced in Edge of Spider-Verse, Marvel did one of its Marvel things and made a bunch of variant covers to comics using Gwen Stacy, casting her as other heroes. So when Deadpool's Secret Secret Wars No.2 came out in 2015 and people saw this little Gwenpool, they went nuts.

She wasn't even a character yet, and fans loved her. We wanted more of her. So Marvel gave us more.

Her first official appearance was in Howard the Duck Vol 6, serving as backup and establishing herself as not Gwen Stacy or even anyone with Deadpool-like powers but, in fact, Gwendolyn Poole: a Marvel comic fan from our world who got sucked into the 616 and got herself a hero outfit so she wouldn't be cast as a background character.

Her first real run in 2016 started with The Unbelievable Gwenpool, fleshing out who Gwen was and what she wanted to do. The primary answer to that last question was "stay relevant." Her unique position as someone who knew she was in a comic book meant she was singularly equipped with the kind of fourth-wall-breaking knowledge that could keep her skin in the game as an otherwise completely human character finding a place among heroes. It also gave her the motivation to keep getting herself in danger because she knew if people stopped caring about her, she would stop being written. It's enough to give someone an existential crisis: to know you have to be interesting to comic book nerds or else you will cease to exist.

In The Unbelievable Gwenpool, she gets powers to find the edges of comic book panels, letting her exist in the white in-between spaces of her book. This puts her in the Howard the Duck and Deadpool category of reality-breaking heroes and firmly cements her as officially of the comic book world.

The Unbelievable Gwenpool was an international success and allowed Gwen to branch off into team-ups with The West Coast Avengers (where she acquires another Marvel fan fave, Jeff the landshark) and pop up in Rocket Raccoon & Groot No. 8 to 10, Champions Vol 2 No. 4 and 5, Spider-Man/Deadpool (2016-2019) No. 42, and 47 to No. 50, and Deadpool (2019) No.1 before her second solo comic run, Gwenpool Strikes Back, in 2019! The focus of this limited series is, again, to make herself a main character, essentially. Just to cause a lot of drama with major players in the franchise in hopes of drumming up enough interest that she can continue as a character in perpetuity. It's a really funny run, and I highly recommend it.

Since 2019, she's been in Marvel collections like Marvel Love Unlimited, where she comes out as aroace (which is awesome!), and of course, It's Jeff!, the Marvel Unlimited series, where she gets some page time with her precious landshark puppy. But she's yet to have any more major appearances. Until now!

It's a tale as old as time: beloved character dies and is brought back Wrong™. The same thing happened to my best friends Bucky Barnes and Jason Todd. This time, it's Weapon-X digging up a corpse and turning it into a grittier version of a previously deceased partner. Gwen Stacy is set to return to the 616, exhumed from her 53-year-old grave, and cause mayhem for not only her former lover, Peter Parker, but also this young upstart hero who was literally created through her legacy. Creator of this new series, Cavan Scott, is approaching the assignment with relish, saying: "What an absolute honor! To tear both Gwenpool AND Spider-Man's worlds apart? Yes please!" 

The series will be simply titled Gwenpool and the first issue is set to release May 14, 2025.