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Nobody was prepared for the backlash when Gwen Stacy died, especially Stan Lee. Peter Parker’s longtime girlfriend was killed by the Green Goblin in Amazing Spider-Man #121, and fans were not happy. Marvel was flooded with letters from angry fans, and Stan Lee was accosted during public appearances. This caused Lee, who was Marvel’s publisher at the time, to publicly disown the story.

“Stan did not say no to this,” Amazing Spider-Man #121 writer, the late Gerry Conway, said during a spotlight panel at San Diego Comic Con 2013. “I mean, Stan was fine with it. He was like, ‘Yeah, okay. Go kill her.’ But Stan did get a lot of heat at conventions and at college campuses, and as a result of that started claiming that it happened when he had been out of the office and didn’t know. And he asked us to bring her back, which led to a whole other set of stories.”

Conway and Roy Thomas, Marvel’s editor-in-chief, thought it would be cheap to undo Gwen’s death, so they searched for a compromise that would appease their agitated publisher.

“Stan wanted to bring back Gwen Stacy. None of us wanted to bring back the real Gwen Stacy. And I said, ‘Well, how about if I bring her back as a clone, and then can I get rid of her right away.’ Stan said sure, and that’s the direction we took.”

“Stan did sort of shift the blame off onto me and onto Roy and the other people at the office, and that’s why he asked us to bring Gwen back. I think to our credit, and I will credit Roy a lot on this as the editor, we didn’t. We brought back a version of her, but it wasn’t her, and it was very clearly not her, and she never came back into the books. I think she’s the only major character in comics who’s ever been killed off who has never come back. And I think that’s one of the reasons she’s an icon.”

However, Lee’s request to bring Gwen Stacy back had unintended consequences. As Conway wrote the issues introducing Gwen Stacy’s clone, he wondered what it would be like if there were other clones.

“As I was working on it I realized, well, wouldn’t it be kind of fun if we end up with Peter having to fight himself as a clone.”

And thus, the original Spider-Man Clone Saga was born. The story would have a controversial follow-up in the ‘90s, which also inspired its own series of angry letters (albeit for different reasons). It’s funny to think all the drama surrounding Ben Reilly and the Clone Saga happened because Stan Lee was tired of angry college students.

Marvel's most reliable superhero has proven he can do a whole lot more than just 'whatever a spider can.' Swing into Spidey's history with Popverse's...

• Best Spider-Man comic books 
• The best Spider-Mans (or is it Spider-Men?)
• Spider-Man movie watch order
• Spider-Man's actors, ranked
• The best Spider-Man suits
• and the Spider-verse explained!

Just watch out for that radioactive blood.