Spider-Man: Gwen Stacy's Brush With White Supremacy
by Brian Cronin – on Aug 25, 2019 in CBR Exclusives
This is a feature called "A Political World," where we spotlight 20th Century comic book stories that came out back when comic books were not political at all, unlike comic books nowadays.
Today, based on a suggestion from reader Jack E., we look at how Gwen Stacy's anger at Spider-Man led her to inadvertently become caught up with a white supremacist!
Everything really started in Amazing Spider-Man #90 (by Stan Lee, Gil Kane and John Romita), where Spider-Man is fighting with Doctor Octopus when a piece of rubble is knocked down into the street and is about to crush a little kid when Captain George Stacy heroically throws himself in front of the boy...
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And of course, right as Stacy dies, he lets Spider-Man know that that he knows Peter's secret identity!
This disturbs Gwen Stacy a lot, as you might imagine, and, like every other character in Spider-Man's life, she has decided to blame Spider-Man for the death of her father...
She hates Spider-Man so much that she goes to visit Sam Bullit, an old police colleague of George Stacy that is now running for District Attorney. He and Stacy never saw eye to eye on things and so he loves the idea of Stacy's daughter actually wanting to help get him elected because of his promise to take down Spider-Man...
Bullit parlays that into an endorsement from J. Jonah Jameson, which aggravates Robbie Robertson...
Bullit starts to rail against Spider-Man in all of his public appearances. He has some of his thugs lean on Peter to try to get information about how he gets Spider-Man's photo (they assume he knows Spider-Man). Spidey then goes to his apartment, only to find Gwen and Bullit both there!
In the next issue, Spidey pretends that he was following Gwen and he "kidnaps" her...
Iceman then steps into the scene (he happened to be nearby) and "saves" Gwen from Spider-Man. Bullit uses this to help his anti-Spider-Man campaign...
However, when Bullit goes to visit the Daily Bugle, he is shocked to find out that Jameson has found out that behind his "law and order" rhetoric are really the ramblings of a white supremacist! Robbie Robertson has been aware of Bullit for a long time and he has the receipts, everybody!
Naturally, Bullit tries to have Robbie killed to suppress the information, but Spider-Man and Iceman (after Spidey managed to convince Iceman that he was not a bad guy) save the day and Bullit is revealed as a criminal...
We're never shown how Gwen handled the fact that her hatred of Spider-Man drove her into the arms of white supremacy.