Spider-Woman (Gwen Stacy)

Spider-Woman

General Information

Real Name

Gwendolyn Maxine Stacy

Current Alias

Spider-Woman, Spider-Gwen

Status

Alive

Characteristics

Gender/Pronouns

Woman, She/Her

Age

Height

5'6"

Weight

135lbs

Eyes

Blue

Hair

Dyed blonde-pink

Unusual Features

Eyebrow piercing
Tooth gap
Spider-bite scar

Extended Information

Alias(es)

Gwanda
Ghost-Spider
Gwendy (Hobie)

Affiliations

Spider-Band
Spider-Society

Relatives

George Stacy
Helen Stacy (deceased)

Education

Lower Manhattan Middle School
Visions Academy, Chelsea

Occupation

Spider-Woman
Mary Janes' Drummer

"You’re a good cop, Dad. You put on that badge because you know if you don’t, someone who shouldn’t will. But you have to understand, this mask is my badge. And I’m trying to be good too."
—Gwen Stacy

Gwendolyn Maxine "Gwen" Stacy was bitten by a radioactive spider, giving her superhuman powers that she used to become a superheroine known as Spider-Woman and unknowingly avoiding the typical fate of other Gwen Stacies in the multiverse. She accidentally killed her best friend, Peter Parker, early in her career and spent years being hunted by her cop father, who didn't know Spider-Woman and his daughter were one and the same, as a result.

Gwen was one of the five Spider-People pulled into Earth-1610B by Kingpin's collider. She met Miles Morales, an alternate version of Peter who became Spider-Man, plus Peni Parker, Peter Porker and Spider-Noir. After returning to her home universe, she continued operating as Spider-Woman until ultimately ending up drawn into the Spider-Society, a multiversal taskforce chasing down anomalies. Here, she was mentored by Jess Drew, managed by Miguel O'Hara, and made friends with Hobie Brown and Pavitr Prabhakar. A few months into her time there, she was able to return to Miles world and set off a domino effect that would lead to the disruption of everything they thought they knew.

Appearance

Gwen Stacy is a white teenage girl with freckles, blue eyes and bleached blonde hair with a one-sided undercut, her brunette roots are growing in and the tips are dyed pink. She stands at about 5'6" and though she's fairly slight, she has lean muscle thanks to a combination of her spider bite and her physical activity. She has a silver barbell eyebrow piercing in her right eyebrow. There's a gap between her two front teeth.

Her fashion choices tend towards the grunge and punk end of the spectrum, with a lot of outfits thrown together from discordant pieces and often torn, tailored, and patched. For a sense of her style, see here.

As Spider-Woman, her suit is primarily white and black, though there are some pink accents patterned with blue spider-webs on the inside of her hood and the arm-warmer like gloves. She wears either blue-teal converse or pointe ballet shoes.

Personality

Gwen puts on a front of confidence and composure that, frankly, does not go as deep beneath the surface as she'd like you to think. In the early days of her time as Spider-Woman she was a lot more relaxed and cocky, despite the necessary secrecy, but after accidentally killing Peter when he became the Lizard, her attitude shifted. Though she is still quippy and outwardly confident when she's acting Spider-Woman, in her personal life she became depressed and avoidant, closing herself off from everyone else in her life so as not to risk hurting them. Her real emotions get bottled up underneath whatever mask she's putting on that day and only get released through fights as Spider-Woman or playing the drums with violent passion.

Beneath all the angst, she's a kind of goofy, awkward teenager who doesn't really know how to do this 'friends' thing anymore despite latching onto surprisingly quickly when she feels that someone understands her. She makes bad jokes, she stumbles over things, she blurts out the first thing on her mind, she has no idea how to endear herself to people's parents. She's a little desperate for approval from other and especially senior Spider-People and yet also isn't afraid to give them a bit of attitude. She's snarky and blunt and can be rude, sometimes, on purpose or not.

There's a certain divide between her identity as Gwen Stacy, Normal Girl and Gwen Stacy, Spider-Woman. She usually keeps them separate, but when she's around other Spider-People that she feels at ease with the line blurs, and when she's simultaneously in a crisis that requires Spider-Woman and yet putting on a civilian persona, it blurs in a whole new way that's a lot harder to keep up.

Abilities

Powers
Spider Physiology
Superhuman strength: Gwen possesses the proportionate strength of a spider, which in practice means she can punch a guy through a wall and, when not dampened by specific game rules, lets her lift up to 10 tonnes.
Superhuman durability: Gwen's body is far tougher and denser than a regular human as she can withstand falls from extreme heights, blunt force trauma, and superhuman blows with little damage.
Superhuman speed: Gwen possesses the proportionate speed of a spider, therefore she can run and move at speeds that are beyond the natural physical limits of the finest human athlete. She is able to traverse several paces while running, moving, and web-swinging.
Superhuman agility: Gwen possesses an enhanced levels of agility and flexibility beyond the natural physical limits of an Olympic-level gymnast. She combines this natural agility with her training as a dancer.
Perfect sense of self in space: Gwen has perfect balance and is always aware of up/down/etc in relation to herself.
Wall-crawling: Gwen possesses the ability to cling onto any surface through contact, even through clothing.
Spider-Sense: When danger is present, Gwen experiences a buzzing sensation in her head as a sort of warning system, allowing her to react accordingly. Her spider-sense offers her near complete awareness of her surroundings that, in conjunction with her reflexes, allows her to instinctively dodge or counter nearly all attacks. Also triggers in recognition of other spider-people.
Healing factor: A mild healing factor that lets her heal up from fights in time to hide it from her dad.

Other

Gwen is a trained dancer and gymnast as a result of taking classes in her youth.
Gwen is an accomplished drummer and was part of a band since middle school.
Gwen is good enough at chemistry and engineering to create her web-fluid and web-shooters.
Gwen can sew, alter and tailor clothing, and designed her own spider-suit.
Gwen has become an adept fighter thanks to years of experience fighting villains.

Friends & Alliances

[disclaimer: these lists involve use of headcanon, sometimes drawing directly from Gwen's comic universe and sometimes inventing details wholesale seeing as the comics have a very different tone and many missing gaps; should the movies touch on any of that, it will be updated to be canon-compliant]

Friends

Miles Morales / Earth-1610B's Spider-Man. Her first real friend after Peter, perhaps the person she feels most capable of being herself around.
Hobie Brown / Earth-138B's Spider-Man, aka Spider-Punk. Looked out for her and let her crash in his universe often.
Pavitr Prabhakar / Earth-50101B's Spider-Man. A ball of sunshine early in his spider career.
Peni Parker / Earth-14512B's SP//dr. Accomplished technician and mech fighter, recently went through a traumatic canon-event.
Peter B. Parker / Earth-616B's Spider-Man, once washed up but now back in the game and an excited father.
Margo Kess / Earth-22191B's Spider-Woman, aka Spider-Byte. Rough home life, operates primarily as a digital avatar.
Spider-Noir / Earth-90214B's Spider-Man, aka Spider-Noir. Noir detective with a soft side.
Peter Porker / Earth-8311B's Spider-Man, aka Spider-Ham. Used to be a spider, got bitten by a radioactive pig.
Peter Parker (deceased) / Earth-65B's Peter Parker and Lizard, Gwen's best friend who she accidentally killed when he took the lizard serum and attacked homecoming.
The Mary Janes / Earth-65B's Em Jay, Gory Grant, and Betty Brant. Gwen's friends and bandmates she's drifted away from.
Harry Osborn / Earth-65B's Harry Osborn, once a friend of Peter and Gwen's that, following Peter's death, left Visions to go to a private military academy at the behest of his father.

Other Heroes

Captain America / Samantha Wilson, perhaps the original superhero. Given a supersoldier serum as part of Project: Rebirth during WW2. Was trapped outside of reality for 75-years before returning to a changed world. Gwen's met her once when she came to clean up a mess caused by Kraven.
Black Panther / Shuri, protector and princess of Wakanda. Became the Black Panther after her brother, T'Challa, was wounded in a way that even the powers of the herb could not heal him from.
She-Hulk / Jennifer Walters, mutated by gamma radiation, works as a wrestler and a lawyer in her spare time. Seen on TV a lot.
Ms Marvel / Kamala Khan, operates in New Jersey. Gwen's bumped into her a few times and they've even fought together once or twice, but they don't know each other's secret identities and their territories don't habitually overlap.
Black Widow / Multiple women that go by the same title, all once trained in the Red Room but now working in covert operations for the greater good. One of them, Natasha Romanoff, now works as a manager for various superpowered individuals.
X-Men / Mutants exist in this world and though mostly keep to themselves, there is an iteration of the X-Men active in parts of the country. The famous singer Dazzler is a secret mutant, as is her bassist, Pixie.
TBA / Etc.

Enemies & Rivals

Earth-65B
[disclaimer: this list involves use of headcanon, sometimes drawing directly from Gwen's comic universe and sometimes inventing details wholesale seeing as the comics have a very different tone and many missing gaps; should the movies touch on any of this, it will be updated to be canon-compliant]

Doc Ock / Doctor Otto Octavius. An accomplished scientist turned supervillain, forged a telepathic link with a giant super-intelligent, super-powered octopus that he now uses like a living version of the limbs most other Doc Ocks use. Regularly steals and develops new dangerous tech.
Vulture / Adrian Toomes. Fired from Oscorp after having his ideas stolen, he now spends his time attacking and causing problems for the PDNY and nurturing a grudge against Spider-Woman for reasons Gwen cannot at all comprehend.
Electro / Has electricity manipulation powers as a result of a freak lightning strike, uses them to commit crime. Once caused a nearly city-wide blackout by absorbing electricity from the grid, forcing Gwen into a very exhausting evening of crime-fighting in the dark while she tried to get her father to stop worrying about where she was.
Rhino / Aleksei Sytsevich. Criminal with superhuman strength and durability, who's gimmick is dressing in rhino armour when he commits crimes. Often being used as a pawn by other villains, particularly Kingpin and Matt Murdock.
Kingpin / Wilson Fisk, criminal mastermind the size and density of your average stone block wall. Now in prison after being successfully arrested by Captain Stacy, the reason behind his promotion, leaving Matt Murdock in charge of his crime empire. He still manipulates some things from behind the scenes.
Matt Murdock / Right-hand man of and successor to 65B's Kingpin. Matt was on the path to be a hero like in other universes, only for his mentor to be killed and him to be taken in by the Hand to be trained as an assassin. Has made numerous attempts to convince Spider-Woman to stand down and join him, only to go back to fighting when she obviously refuses. Once tried to have Captain Stacy killed to 'help' her, not knowing that's literally her father.
Le Chat Noir / Felicia Hardy, a young thief not much older than Gwen who's been running her in circles for most of her career and flirting with her just as long. Her father was the first Chat Noir until he was killed by Matt Murdock for stealing Kingpin's first dollar.
Mysterio / Quentin Beck, once owned a horror themed theme park where he honed his special effects skills and which he used as a test-bed for a lot of his tricks for scaring people. When the park began to lose business he started to become bitter, and after overhearing someone complaining that his effects just weren't as good as those in movies, he flooded the park with hallucinogenic gas. The park shut, and Mysterio started staging attacks on nearby cities to prove something, more than for any material gain.
Dr. Curtis Connors / Lizard, helped Peter Parker make the serum that would turn him into the first Lizard. Unbeknownst to Gwen, who's still in his class at Visions, he's been working on the serum ever since with the intention of using it on himself.
Bodega Bandit / What Gwen thinks is just a particularly prolific small-time thief who robs bodegas. Half the time she doesn't even bother trying to leave him for the cops as he always seems to be back out soon after anyway, so she just stops him and moves on. In reality he's 'one of an infinite number of Bodega Bandits that exist within the Bodega Beyond, whose purpose is to remind people of how unpredictable life is, by robbing their assigned bodega.' Because the multiverse is weird like that.
Shocker / Herman Schultz, invented his own vibro-shock gauntlets and suit to better enable him to rob banks. Occasionally hired by Murdock to do some bigger heists or do some serious damage to infrastructure.
Kraven the Hunter / Svetlana Kravinova, the legitimate child of obsolete Russian nobility who got into hunting to prove herself as useful as any son and who ultimately hunted down her own father, turning her fervour towards hunting people. Received her powers from a serum created by witch with connections to the family. Originally pointed at Spider-Woman by the Chameleon when she began to tire of easy targets and wanted a challenge.
Chameleon / Daria Smerdyakova, the illegitimate and neglected half-sister of Kraven the Hunter. She developed uncanny impersonation skills as a means to entertain herself and to get access to things she was denied, whether that be material goods or attention/affection. Exposure to radiation and an unusual mix of chemicals that gave her limited shapeshifting. Has proved a real pain in the ass as a criminal, and has attempted to frame Spider-Woman for more crimes on multiple occasions.
Beetle / Janice Lincoln, daughter of deceased villain Tombstone. Worked as aeronautical engineer and used those skills to ultimately build her beetle armour, after deciding she deserved more recognition for her talents.
Grizzly / Maxwell Markham, ex-wrestler disgraced by J. Jonah Jameson who was given an exoskeleton to give him superhuman strength by Matt Murdock, so he could be used as another criminal for hire. Has a habit of attacking the Daily Bugle, Spider-Woman groans that she has to defend Jameson every time.
Scorpion / Maximus Gargan, hired by Matt Murdock to try and find Spider-Woman's secret identity. When this failed, Murdock offered to pay for Maximus to undergo superhuman augmentation using what he was told was a Captain America-esque serum, but was actually a more experimental process using scorpion DNA. Murdock pays for his condition to be stabilised so he can be used.

History

Gwendoyln "Gwen" Stacy was born in Chelsea, New York City, in the early 2000s to George and Helen Stacy. Her mother died when she was maybe four years old, around Gwen's birthday from which she still keeps an unopened present, leaving Captain Stacy to raise Gwen alone. Around the same time, the Stacies met and befriended their neighbours the Parkers, shortly after Peter lost both his parents to a car accident and had to move in with his Aunt May and Uncle Ben. The kids became fast friends, near inseparable, and the families regularly took dinner together.

In middle school, Gwen befriended Em Jay Watson, Glory Grant and Betty Brant and they started the band The Mary Janes. She and Peter also befriended Harry Osborne, rich kid outcast. Peter, however, suffered bullying at the hands of Ned Leeds that followed him into high school; Gwen regularly stood up for him, to no real effect.

Becoming Spider-Woman
Gwen was bitten by a radioactive spider during class when she was around 13 years old, giving her superhuman powers. Inspired by her father's reasons for being police, she chose to use these powers to fight crime and defeat the supervillains that had begun to emerge in the city in recent years. Her first suit was thrown together out of supplies from the theatre department at school, but she quickly figured out how to make something better. She fabricated her own webshooters and webfluid, after much trial and error and some careful questions to Peter.

Unfortunately, her father didn't approve of this mysterious new vigilante and would regularly speculate that she had something to hide. Gwen regularly butted heads with him out in the city when they were at the same incidents, something that eventually caught the attention of Matt Murdock, current kingpin, who attempted to have the Captain assassinated to try and earn some favour from Spider-Woman. This obviously backfired as he didn't know Captain Stacy was her father. Gwen saved him, and got ever more frustrated at Murdock.

Peter, meanwhile, seemed to admire her new persona, taking photographs of her whenever he could. Unbeknownst to Gwen, he actually figured out her secret and, as the bullying only escalated after their move to Visions Academy, Peter developed a serum with their science teacher, Dr. Curtis Connors, that he hoped would make him 'special' like her. Instead, he transformed into a giant, out of control monitor lizard that crashed homecoming to try and attack Ned. Not knowing it was Peter, Spider-Woman fought him and didn't pull her punches, ultimately knocking him into a wall so hard that a beam collapsed and crushed him, returning him to his human form. Gwen held him whilst he died and revealed to her that he knew who she was, but she didn't let him remove her mask and denied it.

Accused of Murder
Captain Stacy arrived on the scene to see Spider-Woman over a dead young boy, and made assumptions. Gwen ran as soon as she heard him coming and as no one knew that Peter had been the lizard, as far as everyone knew, Spider-Woman had murdered Peter Parker.

Spider-Woman became one of New York City's most wanted. Half of the city thought she was innocent, a hero falsely accused, whilst the other half believed the story the PDNY and J. Jonah Jameson were selling. Gwen started to take being Spider-Woman far more seriously than she had early on and closed herself off to everyone around her to avoid 'distractions', or getting them hurt.

She could not, however, avoid her father and what he had to say about her alter-ego. Both at home and out in the city, saving the people that might well hate her from villain after villain, Gwen was bombarded by reminders that her father wanted her arrested and believed she had murdered her best friend. He thought that promising to get justice would make her feel better, not knowing that it could only ever make her feel worse.

At some point she even tried to quit being Spider-Woman because of the scrutiny and worrying that she was only making things worse, but like most Spiders who go through this, she ended up taking up the mantle again before long.

Collider Crisis
Around a year after Peter died, two years after she became Spider-Woman, Gwen was fighting her universe's Doc Ock for the dozenth time when she was suddenly pulled through an interdimensional portal to Earth-1610B and about a week in the past. There, she realised this world has a Spider-Man, too, and followed her spider-sense to Visions Academy where she would eventually meet Miles Morales, newly bitten.

She revealed that she was Spider-Woman in her dimension after Miles and Peter B. Parker, of Earth-616B, attempted to steal from an Alchemax lab and were attacked by Dr. Olivia Octavius aka Doc Ock. She saved their butts. On the way back to the city, on a long bus ride, she and Miles talked properly and bonded quickly.

The three went to visit Aunt May to see if she could help, and there they met Peter Porker, Peni Parker aka SP//dr and Peter Parker aka Spider Noir, three more Spiders that had been pulled in by Kingpin's collider. They made a plan for Miles to stay behind and shut the collider down once the other Spiders had returned home, but after a fight that ended in Miles revealing himself to his Uncle Aaron, who was the Prowler and one of Kingpin's enforcers, who then died in front of him, they decided that he wasn't ready and tried to leave him behind.

But Miles followed them, and, after a big fight at the collider, each Spider returned home to their own universes, including Gwen. Gwen expected this to be the last time she'd ever see Miles, or any of the others, and had only the picture she'd taken with him on the coach to remember him by.

Back to the status quo
Another year went by in Gwen's home dimension, where things were pretty much the same as they had always been since Peter died except for the fact that Gwen was getting increasingly incapable of handling the stress. Captain Stacy got closer and closer to catching her out; Matt Murdock made more and more plays to corrupt her; her rotating cast of rogues came and went as ever, but she had closer and closer calls both in terms of the damage she was taking and dealing.

Her only outlet was the band, but even that began to crumble under the pressure. She couldn't tell the Mary Jane's anything, Harry had gone away to a private military school in another state, and she saw her father less and less at home compared to out in the world as Spider-Woman. Having a taste of what it meant for someone to understand you only made it worse.

Eventually, after about a year, she quit the band in an angry outburst when they expressed concern one too many times. The same evening, in an attempt to cheer her up her father told her he really felt like they were close to catching Spider-Woman. As if that wasn't bad enough, a call came in on the police radio about a superhuman event at the Guggenheim Art Museum that they both had to rush out to intervene with, all whilst Gwen was fully aware how her luck was running out.

The Vulture at the museum was not her Vulture. A Vulture from a Leonardo Da Vinci-esque dimension made of paper had fallen through another hole in the multiverse. Gwen fought hard, but he had her on the ropes by the time another portal opened and a mysterious new Spider-Man burst through to assist. Gwen was immediately distracted by his multiversal travelling watch. In the end, they needed to call in another Spider-Woman as back-up, and the three of them just barely stopped a helicopter from landing on a bunch of civilians.

Exhausted, Gwen about collapsed, but was forced to her feet again when Captain Stacy found her. Out of webs, Gwen had no way to disarm him, and after he fired a warning shot she made a choice: she took off her mask and showed him who she was. This, unfortunately, did not help. Attempts to explain went ignored and George raised his gun on her again. Only the intervention of Miguel O'Hara and Jess Drew prevented things from getting worse, and they allowed her to come with them to the Spider-Society on Earth-928B.

Spider-Society
Gwen began living full-time at either the Spider-Society's HQ, or, after befriending him on a mission to his dimension, with Hobie Brown, Spider-Punk of Earth-138B. She spent a good few months running missions to chase down anomalies in other dimensions, completing a few dozen assignments in that short time and being mentored by Jess Drew. She also befriended Pavitr Prabhakar, Margo Kess, and re-connected with Peni and Peter B.

But it wasn't all good. Even aside from the weight of what happened at home, Gwen was informed about the concept of canon-events: events that happen in the story of every Spider-Person, every time. It went far beyond the Uncle Ben's and Peter Parkers that inspired them to do better. Her father, being a police captain, was doomed to die sometime in her world's future. Gwen Stacy, and variants thereupon, existed in other universes, but in any world where she fell for Spider-Man, she would die. This Gwen is, seemingly, the exception. Except, of course, there's Miles.

She also learns that Miles is the original anomaly, that his spider came from another universe and that he was never 'supposed' to be Spider-Man. She is forbidden from visiting him and though it hurts, she manages to obey this for a while until a mission comes up in his world. She convinces Jess to send her on it, visits Miles, has the best day she's had in months... and in the process lets a multiverse-traversing villain called the Spot loose.

Changing Canon
Miles follows her when she leaves. He disrupts a canon event. Gwen sits through her second worst nightmare of watching Miles learn the truth and reject it, then find out she'd personally been lying to him by omission too because she didn't know how to tell him. He makes a break for home to save his father and at first it seems like he makes it. In the aftermath, Gwen argues with Miguel, gets blamed for Miles escaping, and her first worst nightmare comes true: she's sent home, unaware of whether her father was even alive or what he'd do if he saw her again.

But she risked it all just to get back her photo of Miles. Her father was there asleep on the couch, but woke up after she arrived and stopped her leaving. She thought he had a gun, but webbed it from his hand only to find it was just the walkie talkie in her penguin. He almost stormed out after she made a grim joke, but she followed him and poured her heart out about how hard the last few years had been and how much she was just trying to do good like him. And... he quit. Then and there. Averting canon and starting to repair their relationship in one action.

What she then learned was that Hobie had paid him a visit, having quit the Society after the chase for Miles began. He gave George a watch to give her, one he'd built himself, and Gwen travelled to Earth-1610B only to find Miles had ended up on Earth-42 instead. After figuring this out, she put together a team: herself, Hobie, Pavitr, Margo, Peter B, Noir, Porker and Peni, to go and find Miles, bring him home and save his dad.