10 Spider-Man Graphic Novels You Must Read Before You Die
3. The Night Gwen Stacy Died
This was a watershed moment in Peter Parker's life, right up there with getting bit by a radioactive spider, and it changed the landscape of comic books. Up until this point, it was unthinkable that a character as important as Gwen could ever be killed off, but in the space of two issue, writer Gerry Conway, editor Roy Thomas, and artist John Romita turned that whole way of thinking on its head, and brought the Silver Age of comics crashing to a halt.
Convinced that the dynamic between Gwen and Spider-Man had grown stale, the three approached the legend Stan Lee and said they wanted to get rid of the character for good.
As Lee himself said to Roy Thomas in Alter Ego: "... I was just getting ready to go to Europe on some sort of a business trip to meet somebody to discuss something about Marvel. And I think I wasn't thinking too clearly, because when they said, 'We'd like to kill Gwen Stacy,' I said, 'Well, if that's what you want to do, okay.' " and those few words set in motion a whole new direction for the old Web-Head.
Just think, if Stan the Man wasn't in a rush that day, things could've been very different.