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Gwen Stacy has gone by many different names in Marvel Comics, emblematic of the fact that she's much more than just a former girlfriend of Peter Parker. Spider-Gwen, Ghost Spider, and most recently, Mysterio in Marvel's Ultimate Spider-Man series.

"What?!" you might be saying right now - "Gwen as Mysterio?"

Yes, Gwen has a completely different vibe in Jonathan Hickman and Marco Checchetto's Ultimate Spider-Man series, for good reason! I got the chance to talk with Jonathan Hickman about Ultimate Spider-Man and asked him about why he chose to reinvent Mysterio from the ground up in the book. 

"I don't want to explain the story too much," Hickman began. "I generally don't do that, but I think there's a thing of where the world is full of real people and fake people right now. And the fake people put on, they glom on a hyperreal but entirely superficial aspect of themselves. And they put that out into the universe and it's almost like they don't realize how fraudulent it appears to people who have things that are real. And I'm obviously playing with all of that, you know, with Harry and Gwen.

In Ultimate Spider-Man, there's a group of magic-users called Mysterio that Gwen's father, George, was involved in. Gwen later joined Mysterio as an adult before marrying Harry Osborn. Having married into the notoriously drama-and-crime-free Osborn family, Gwen joined up with Wilson Fisk as his fishbowl-headed Mysterio. 

"But there's a cost to that, and I'm also playing with that as well," Hickman continues. "And then you know, obviously stuff happens in the last couple of issues that I'm not gonna spoil."

Mysterio is all about illusions and appearances, which works perfectly with the Osborn family as a whole. So much of the Osborn family's legitimacy - in any universe - has depended on their ability to defend the appearance of it. That is, even though the Osborn family is rotten to the core, they've managed to get away with some of their darkest deeds by pretending to be halfway honorable and wholesome. Clearly, within the context of Ultimate Spider-Man, Gwen Stacy was their ticket to feigning a morally upright reputation. Ultimately, Hickman's writing exposes how a character like Gwen can be used to create an illusion. 

Popverse members can read the entire Q&A with Jonathan Hickman about Ultimate Spider-Man here.

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 
• Spider-Man movie watch order
• Spider-Man's actors, ranked
• and the Spider-verse explained!

Just watch out for that radioactive blood.