10 Most Tragic Deaths In The History Of Spider-Man

8. Captain Stacy

Your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man has a strained relationship with the Stacy family of upstate New York. Somehow he keeps being involved in their deaths. When it came to the untimely demise of Captain George Stacy, the tragedy wasn't just that he was the father of Peter's then-current girlfriend Gwen, or that Spidey was directly involved in his passing. It was that Captain Stacy had becoming something of a surrogate father figure for the webhead, something he had been seeking all his life, following his parents dying while he was an infant and the murder of Uncle Ben, the man who raised him, before he even made it out of his teens. It also helped that Captain Stacy was one of the few people in the city who vocally supported Spider-Man. Whilst the party line was very much in keeping with J Jonah Jameson and the Daily Bugle's assertion that he was a MASKED MENACE and probably breaking all sorts of laws by keeping up with the masked vigilante schtick, Stacy reneged against his NYPD colleagues by publicly defending Spidey's actions. At the same time he instantly warmed to Peter, being more than happy that this was the kid his daughter was falling in love with. All sounds rather cushy, so obviously the old man had to die. It happened during a fight between Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus, too, where one of Ock's metal tentacles accidentally smashed a whole in a building. Captain Stacy pushed a young girl out of the way of the falling debris but, sadly, was crushed under it himself. As if that heroic sacrifice didn't make his death tragic enough, he then revealed that he knew Peter's secret identity all along, approved of it, and asked him to take care of Gwen before going to join the choir invisible. Sniff. What a guy.