Last year, Wolverine died. You know Wolverine, the brazen member of The X-Men with the adamantium skeleton and claws. The cigar-chomping, whiskey swilling, motorcycle riding loner with an edge / heart of gold. It was noble; it was tragic. It is also, certainly, temporary. You can’t keep a good hero down.

This is the accepted reality in comic books: death is always temporary. If your favorite hero dies, just wait a year or so and voila, a new reincarnation is born. Marvel, DC, it doesn’t matter. They all go down, and they all come back eventually.

Superman died back in 1993; he was back that same year. More recently, Spider-Man, in the the Ultimates Universe, was killed by the Green Goblin. Steve Rodgers’ Captain America was dead for a few years, Barry Allen’s The Flash was dead for a few decades. This is just how comics works. From Jean Grey to Green Lantern. You go down, you come back, you go on.

Comics creators understand this. While they have to be true to what has come before, they also work in a field that has a certain flexibility. The phenomenon known as ret-conning, or retroactive continuity, allows for almost any plot detail to be done away with, big or small. And the current multiverse structure of the comics publishers, as well as the science-fiction elements of time travel, or even “because science” (see Peter Parker), is all one really needs to bring a beloved dead hero back to life.

This has all become sort of a joke, actually. There are parodies of the superhero death trend, and readers know that death in comic books is not death. It is always “death.” There is even a Wikipedia page expounding all of this: Comic Book Death. It is, in the scheme of death, a category unto itself.

The (un)reality of comic book death does have a dark side, one that gets too often swept aside in comics. Superheroes fight for justice, and often they die in service of that fight. When they come back, they are (generally), allowed back into the fight. Their death is not on repeat, their life is. But that’s not always the case.

Just look at Gwen Stacy.

Gwen Stacy died in 1973. In a two part series of The Amazing Spider-Man called “The Night Gwen Stacy Died,” the web-slinger’s girlfriend is kidnapped by the Green Goblin, and eventually thrown from the George Washington Bridge. Spider-Man is able to catch her with his webbing but the rebound snaps her neck, and she is killed.

Gwen’s death is the first of its kind in comics. Some have argued that Gwen Stacy’s death is the moment that created modern comic books, that with her death the Silver Age officially ended. I don’t know if that’s true or not. But it’s a powerful story about a man failing in an extreme situation, and suffering from the loss of the woman he loved. It’s a defining moment in Spider-Man, and comics.

This being comic books, Gwen Stacy did not stay dead. Forty years on, Gwen has died over and over. Most recently in last year’s film adaptation of the story, The Amazing Spider-Man 2. This rendition of her murder replaced Green Goblin with Electro, who threw Stacy from the bridge, causing Spider-Man to catch her with his webbing and snap her neck, again. Peter Parker, as a result, is depressed.

Ten years earlier, In Spider-Man Blue, from 2002-2003, readers do not see Stacy killed, yet her death is the central thematic element of the book. Blue finds Peter Parker, years after Gwen’s death, talking to his dead ex-girlfriend via tape recorder. Many consider Blue to be among the best Spider-Man arcs, a recognizable pattern: Peter Parker’s character is intimately intertwined with Gwen’s death. (IGN names “The Night Gwen Stacy Died” and Spider-Man Blue as the two best stories in Spider-Man history).

This is a problem. Call it The Gwen Stacy Problem.

It’s similar to the concept known as Women in Refrigerators, a term coined by comic book writer Gail Simone to refer to the too-common instance of women in comic books whose lives, and often deaths, exist solely as plot devices for male heroes. That phrase refers specifically to the 1994 comic Green Lantern #54, in which the girlfriend of then Green Lantern Kyle Rayner is murdered in his apartment and her body stuffed inside a refrigerator.

After coining the term Women in Refrigerators, creators and readers began to compile a list of all the women who were “killed, maimed or de-powered” in the service of a male character’s plot development. Like other broad surveys of creative work, Women in Refrigerators doesn’t tell audiences much about any specific comic story. But it highlights an industry-wide trend of treating girls and women in comics as disposable accessories to the Hero’s Story.

The Gwen Stacy Problem, though, takes the Women in Refrigerators trope and adds the unfortunate complication of Comic Book Death. It requires not only that Gwen Stacy be killed to assist in the emotional maturation process of Peter Parker, but that she be—as the saying goes—refrigerated, over and over again.

In truth, comic books, as an industry, have started to figure this problem out. Strong writers—both male and female—have begun to imagine outcomes other than refrigeration for women in comics stories. Recent years have seen an influx of actualized women and girls in comics serving not as a device for the hero but as, well, women and girls. People. Amazing how much better a book is when characters live or die in service of their own story, rather than as merely sub-plots to punish or teach a moral lesson to a man.

Right now, in fact, Gwen Stacy is getting her own turn in the lead role. A new book called Spider-Gwen has put Stacy in the spider-suit, and killed off Peter Parker. It’s not a perfect solution, but it is, for the first time in Gwen Stacy’s long, very sad life, a chance to come back from death and face a future other than death on repeat.

So why does The Gwen Stacy Problem matter? If comics as an industry is righting the course, can’t we look forward to a bright future for Gwen? No. No we can’t

When comic books readers were comprised almost entirely of young men-chiefly the mid 1970s until the past decade or so-such problems as Women in Refrigerators, or the perpetual death of Gwen Stacy, passed without much comment. When comment did arise—or even controversy, such as the rape of Carol Danvers in Avengers #200—that commentary remained in the community of readers and creators.

Now, though, comic books are not an industry for young men. Comics are not even an industry of comic books. Comic books are the lodestone of the largest entertainment industry of the past decade: The Superhero Movie.

The superhero film industry is lagging behind its source material. Comics readers, creators, and publishers have been fighting a long hard fight over the diversity and representation in comics. Because it matters. It matters how women are treated by writers and by characters; it matters that people of color live in the Marvel and DC Universes; it matters that queer readers can find queer characters. It took a long, hard fight to see these things change. And it’s better, of course, but there is much to be done.

Cinema is less dynamic. Change comes to Hollywood at glacial speeds. Movies are vastly more expensive to produce and much more money will be lost in failure. In the service of reaching as many people as possible, the superhero movies of today tend to play like comic books of decades past.

Just look at Gwen Stacy.

As Gwen Stacy finds new life in the Marvel Comics Universe the Gwen Stacy Problem is shifting to the movies. Gwen died at the end of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, in service of a man named Peter Parker, and in service of a movie that was absolutely terrible. So terrible, in fact, that the franchise was buried. Now, in the vein of Comic Book Death, it is in the process of being re-booted. Giving the world one more chance to see a young woman die to help Peter Parker grow up.

So, to the individual who directs the re-re- re-boot of the Spider-Man film franchise, do us all a favor: let Gwen Stacy rest in peace.

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