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Spider-Man: One More Day is one of the most controversial stories ever told about the character. However, it turns out the original draft would’ve been even more controversial.

The 2007 storyline ended with the demon Mephisto rewriting the timeline so that Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson were never married. This was done as part of a Faustian bargain to save Aunt May’s life. The final chapter of the storyline featured the return of Harry Osborn, a supporting character who had been dead for years. But Harry wasn’t the only character Marvel wanted to bring back.

“We wanted to bring in some cast members, and [Gwen Stacy] was one of those cast members that I remembered fondly as a kid,” former Marvel editor-in-chief and One More Day penciler Joe Quesada told me in a 2010 interview for Spider-Man Crawlspace. “Both [James Michael Straczynski] and myself were vehement; we wanted to bring her back. We passed this piece of paper around a room of 50 creatives, and we put Gwen, and no Gwen. And we asked people anonymously to check one box. By the time it got back to me, bringing Gwen back had won out by one vote. One single vote. So, we were going to bring Gwen back.”

This vote was held in 2006 as Marvel was planning the next phase of Spider-Man books, which included One More Day and their three-times-a-month publishing initiative Brand New Day. Speaking with Popverse for a Brand New Day oral history article, Spider-Man editor Tom Brevoort recalls his reaction to Marvel’s plans for Gwen Stacy

“We knew that when we were going to inherit the titles, a couple of things were in place,” Brevoort says. “Spider-Man wasn't going to be married anymore. And then, as part of that story, Joe and Joe Straczynski had intended to bring back Harry Osborn. And there was some back and forth at the time of, 'Are they going to bring back Gwen Stacy?' I kind of put my thumb on the scale and said, 'No, don't do that. That's bad.'”

As Quesada recounts, Brevoort approached him a few months after the vote and convinced him to nix their plans to raise Gwen from the grave.

“Tom walked into my office, closed the door, and he said, 'It’s a mistake. Bringing Gwen back is a mistake,'” Quesada says. “We talked about it. One of the things that he said that was poignant was she’s been dead longer than she was alive in the comic books. So, the only people that really remember her with that sort of affection are fans that have been reading the books for that long a period of time. So, he questioned me and said, is it something that you want to bring back because you emotionally like the character or is it really going to be good for the cast?”

Looking back, Quesada admits that Gwen’s revival wouldn’t have made sense.

“It felt a little too magical to bring her back. It felt a little too heavy-handed by Mephisto,” Quesada says.

While the main continuity version of Gwen Stacy is still dead, that hasn’t stopped Marvel from using doppelgangers of the character, such as Spider-Gwen. In fact, thanks to the Spider-Verse films and the preschool show Spidey and His Amazing Friends, Spider-Gwen is probably bigger in the public consciousness than the original Gwen ever was.

Would that have still happened if One More Day had revived Gwen? It’s hard to say, but for the time being, the original Gwen remains in the grave. It just goes to show you that a passionate speech from an editor is sometimes more powerful than a secret ballot.

Get ready for what's next with our guide to upcoming comics, how to buy comics at a comic shop, and our guide to Free Comic Book Day 2025.