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Why did Gwen Stacy die? It depends on who you ask and when you ask them.

In 1973 Marvel readers were shocked when Spider-Man’s girlfriend Gwen Stacy was killed by the Green Goblin in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man #121. Gwen had been knocked off the Brooklyn Bridge, and although Spider-Man caught her, the Goblin explained that Gwen had died from “shock of sudden fall.” Other explanations have surfaced over the years, like a broken neck from Spider-Man’s webbing catching her. At one point it was revealed that Norman Osborn chose to kill Gwen to hide the existence of their secret children (this story was thankfully retconned).

However, Gerry Conway, the writer of Amazing Spider-Man #121, says that Gwen’s death happened because he shipped Spider-Man with another girl.

“When I first came on to Spider-Man, I was 19 years old, and John Romita was the artist on the book and had been for about six years,” Gerry Conway says during a spotlight panel at San Diego Comic Con 2013. “John was the old pro in the group and was the guy whom we looked to for guidance. John wanted to kill off a major character to create some interest in the title. We sort of felt the book was sort of drifting along a little bit. Things have been kind of stable and nice for Peter, and we wanted to shake things up. So, John’s first thought was let’s kill off Aunt May.”

“My reaction to that was Aunt May has been dying for like 10 years, and her dying would probably not be that much of a surprise. It would be sort of like, well, she’s now dead. What I wanted to do was sort of shake things up. And I had kind of an ulterior motive, which was when Mary Jane Watson was first introduced eight or nine years before, she seemed like she was going to be Peter Parker’s girlfriend. That was sort of what we were led to believe. It was like this big build-up over several issues. She was mysterious and odd, and then we see her, and she’s gorgeous, and she’s got this great attitude.”

Related: The oral history of Marvel's Amazing Spider-Man 'Brand New Day' era

While Peter and Mary Jane had casually dated after her introduction, their relationship halted when Peter realized Gwen was the one he cared for. Peter and Gwen became an official couple, and Mary Jane began dating Peter’s roommate, Harry Osborn. However, Conway always felt MJ was the more interesting character.

“She seemed like she would be a real match for Peter on a verbal one-to-one give-and-take sort of level, and I never felt the same way about Gwen. I’m sort of the guy who never saw Gwen as a real serious match for Peter. She seemed more like Stan’s fantasy than mine. So, there I was, and I sort of put my hand up and said, ‘Well, why don’t we just kill off Gwen? That would be kind of cool. Then we could get Mary Jane into the book more.’ And there was no real serious debate about it. It was sort of like, yeah, that sounds like a good idea.”

“You have to remember that Gwen had been Peter’s serious girlfriend for about five or six years, but the book had been out for about 10. So it wasn’t like Lois Lane, who had been there all the time. Peter had several girls in his life. He had Betty Brant sort of semi-seriously. Liz Allan had been an interest at one point. Mary Jane Watson had been around. So, while Gwen was his official girlfriend, for those of us who had followed the character from the very start, she didn’t feel like she was that integral to the character. To people who had been reading the book for the last five years, she was Lois Lane.”

While the Green Goblin says Gwen had died due to “shock of sudden fall,” the explanation had never been believable. Fans had noticed a ‘snap’ sound effect next to Gwen’s neck during the panel where Spider-Man’s webbing caught her, which led to theories that she had died due to her neck being broken when Spidey caught her. This theory has more or less become the canon explanation in the years since. According to Conway, the ‘snap’ was his idea because he had been feeling cynical.

“It’s a funny story. The way we worked at that time in comics was the writer would write a plot, and then the artist would take it. And that’s why there’s confusion over whether it’s the Brooklyn Bridge or the George Washington Bridge that Gwen gets tossed off. I think in my original outline, I had said one bridge, and then when Gil Kane drew pencils, he drew it as a different bridge for architectural reasons. And I, in the process of writing it, didn’t notice the change because of the way the pencils were drawn. So, I still refer to it as the first bridge, so that was confusing.”

“When I look at the artwork as Gil had drawn it, he did this arch of Gwen’s body flipping as Spider-Man catches her with the web. From an aerodynamic point of view, that is exactly what would have happened. She would have swung in that particular direction. And I guess Gil drew her in such a way that it seemed pretty obvious to me that Gwen’s neck was being broken by the catch. So, I just added the sound effect.”

“It was a little like, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll do that.’ And it was probably kind of sadistic on my part to do it, but from a realistic point of view, I mean, given the circumstances, that is probably pretty much what would have happened. Realistically, if you’re thrown off a bridge, and you’re falling at 32 feet per second, and someone catches you by the ankle, your body is going to go into a whiplash, and under the best of circumstances, you’re going to have a broken back. Under the worst of circumstances, you’re going to turn into a very dead Gwen Stacy.”

(Sidenote: I did my 11th-grade science project on the death of Gwen Stacy and came up with the same results. I got an A.)

“I guess at that particular time in comics, we were trying to meld, and maybe we were taking what [Stan Lee] had set up and taking it a step further than he had intended. Stan had wanted to introduce comics into the real world. He wanted us to feel like this could happen. And my feeling at that time, being a kid and living in New York, where things were very dangerous, and the world was kind of dark, and we were in the middle of the Vietnam War, and people were shooting each other, and we had a president who was about to resign, and all of this nonsense – I had a kind of cynical sort of feeling about heroes, and I think most people did.”

“My notion at that time was that even with the best of intentions, even with the greatest sense of responsibility, even with the greatest power, a hero does not necessarily succeed, and in fact, sometimes the very attempt to do so can be destructive. I mean, that was kind of the story of what was going on in Vietnam. With all of the good intentions that some people had entering into that war, we made a real big mess of it. So, this was sort of a response to that.”

Whether it’s due to secret illegitimate children, the Vietnam War, or shipping Peter and Mary Jane, Gwen Stacy’s death is one of the biggest turning points in Spider-Man history, and its impact will continue to be felt for years to come.

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Just watch out for that radioactive blood.