Essay: Death and Superheroes

LOVE AFTER DEATH by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Above: Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) in "The Amazing Spider-Man 2"

 

Gwen Stacy is dead.  After loyally standing by her superhero in two films, the smart-beautiful girlfriend of Spider-Man finally met her end last week in “The Amazing Spider-Man 2.”  And it was painful to watch, not only because seeing her killed felt like losing a friend, but because the scene was so clumsily crafted.  Realized in ludicrous slow motion, the moment when Gwen fatally falls off the top of an ornate tower felt cheesy—something only amplified by the fact that it was barely reflected upon.  All it took was a montage of moping for Spidey to get over the loss and go back to slamming super-thugs.

            And yet, as anyone who has read the Spider-Man comic books knows, that’s not how it was meant to be.  In the original comic in which Gwen dies (1973’s “The Night Gwen Stacy Died,” by Gerry Conway and Gil Kane), her death is at once tragic and thought-provoking.  Why?  Because Mr. Conway and Mr. Kane made it more than just a loss—the used it as an opportunity to investigate the mixture of romantic love, gray morality, and total machismo that defines the best and most complicated examples of superhero fiction.

            Already, the details of their issue are worthily legendary (one of the reasons Spider-Man fails to save Gwen is that his reactions are dulled by a bout of the flu).  Yet it’s the aftermath (chronicled in the subsequent issue “The Goblin’s Last Stand”) and the superhero’s human alter ego, Peter Parker, that really counts.  Peter is a consummate shy man—a nervous fellow whose idea of chivalry is offering to buy his girlfriend a coke.  Yet the murder of Gwen unhinges him.  Hunting for her killer (the psychotic Green Goblin), he becomes utterly single-minded, ignoring his drug-addicted friend Harry’s cry for help, beating up a pair of cops, and bolting past every other obstacle blocking his path to vengeance.

            Of course, this is all a build-up to Peter’s confrontation with the Goblin.  And it doesn’t disappoint—after punching the man repeatedly, Peter pulls back, horrified at what he might have done to satisfy his anger (What am I doing?” he asks, hand on forehead).  Yet even after taking the high road, he exudes venom.  “You wouldn’t be sorry if your own mother died!” he shouts at his friend Mary Jane as she tries to comfort him. 

            Is it wrong to admit that it’s kind of thrilling to see Peter cut loose like that?  Yes, he’s cruel.  But like all superheroes, he adheres to a strict code of honor, determined to do the proverbial “right thing.”  In other words, he’s like many of us, and his outburst at Mary Jane is the kind of horrible thing we all often want to do when we’re sad and angry, but know we shouldn’t.

            Then again, in this and many other superhero stories, death isn’t just an excuse for a costumed crime fighter to throw a glorified tantrum—it’s also the key to how the superhero rediscovers their own goodness.  That’s certainly the case in the Spider-Man comics, though there’s an even more fascinating example in Frank Miller’s “Daredevil” series, in which attorney Matt Murdock (AKA the blind superhero Daredevil) deals with the murder of his college girlfriend, bounty hunter Elektra Natchios. 

At first, Matt seems hopeless.  In the wake of Elektra’s death, he’s creepily clinical, pouring over the facts of her death in the hope that she might have somehow survived.  He shocks his friends by obsessing over morbid details (“Did the corpse [the coroner] examined have clean lungs?” he asks.  “I know for a fact that Elektra’s lungs were filled with blood”).  Then, in a final act of relatable insanity, he calls up a judge in the middle of the night, asking him to sign and exhumation order so he can check Elektra’s grave for a corpse.

            Of course, the judge refuses.  But Matt goes to the graveyard himself, shovel in hand, becoming more and more convinced with each plunge into the dirt that Elektra is alive, that she has deceived him by faking her death.  “The hero failed,” he declares.  “The lawyer failed.  But the man will find you, Elektra.  Find you—and punish you for what you’ve done to me.”

            But then, something happens.  Matt’s best friend, fellow lawyer Foggy Nelson, enters the graveyard and finds his friend kneeling by an unmoving, clearly dead body.  And then, Matt says what no character could ever say in a shallow, meaningless movie like “The Amazing Spider-Man 2”:

            “I loved her, Foggy.   I loved her.”