This is Not A Series of Essays About Power Girl (III) - Tragic

Shifting through the mess that is Power Girl's past, one finds that when tragedy hits our girl, it never hits her in small ways.

For instance, we start out with the familiar Superman origin: her home world Krypton destroyed. She makes out a tad better than the Big S, as Power Girl (aka Kara Zor-L) was given a full Kryptonian education on the way to Earth. But let's face it, losing an entire world is something major.

Then it happens again. Kara's Earth is destroyed in a massive multiple dimensional conflict. In fact, it's done so thoroughly that no one remembers it ever existing. Now not only is she one of the last of her kind, she's among the last survivors of an entire universe. Very depressing.

I mentioned last time her baby. Y'know, the rapid grow kid that no one wants to remember. (Except me, apparently). Well, he was the result of unnatural methods.

During her period as a descendent of Atlantis, Kara found herself pregnant without any idea just how it happened. As it turns out, the man who she thought was her grandfather arranged her condition (!) through magical means that transcended millennia (!!) so that her son could fight off a demonic threat. So important was this fight that not only did the kid need to reach manhood in a haste, he also had nothing afterwards. Exit the newborn Super Hero.

Not only depressing but creepy to the extremes. And not in a good way. The only thing worse would be to suggest She Hulk seduce her cousin the Hulk (which was actually suggested in one of the Marvel Comics, sad to say)

These past few months have heaped more on Kara's head. Not only does she now remember the loss of her Universe, but she also loses the two people who acted as her family on that Earth, Clark Kent and Lois Lane-Kent. Which is a odd thing to write - Superman and Lois don't die, damn it! - but it happened nonetheless.

So my girl Kara hasn't had it easy. But neither has Peter Parker. And, by the very nature of his tragedies, he was far more relatable than Power Girl. Which is, of course, only a segue to this little tangent on Spider-man's own history. Something that is less Cullen related...

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To start with, Peter's parents died in a plane crash when Peter was very young. The hows and whys of the matter are a bit of a stretch, but that's not the point. They were gone before he ever got to know them.

His Uncle Ben Parker and Aunt May raise him as best they could. Ben, as it has been revealed, dies shortly after Spider-man is born. Aunt May lingers on, hovering just on the verge of death. Between this and constant money problems, the Parker Luck was clearly set to "bad".

Then bad things start happening to anyone and everyone around him. Starting with...

• Betty Brant, Peter's first girlfriend, gets the pleasure of seeing her brother shot. That said brother was slime doesn't change things. Later on in the series, her husband is brutally murdered and dressed up as another of Spider-man's foes. So she has no luck what-so-ever. However, in main ways better of than...
  
• Liz Allen, Peter's first crush and for sometime Betty's rival, has a half brother who becomes a Super Villain. While this turns out okay after some time, she goes off and marries...
  
• Harry Osborn, Peter's best friend, begins experimenting with LSD. Bad trip for all concerned. He straightens out and has a happy life with Liz, right up until he decides to follow in the footsteps of his father...
• Norman Osborn, who is, as we all know, the psychotic Super Villain known as the Green Goblin. As the Goblin, Norman, discovers that Peter is Spider-man. A convenient case of amnesia prevents a disastrous situation but this leaves Peter in a bind. Does he seek help for Norman and risk having his secret identity exposed, or does he just sit back and hope for the best? Not the greatest way to treat his best friend's father, but certainly better than what happens to...
• George Stacy. He gets killed by debris thrown about in a battle between Spider-man and his arch foe, Doctor Octopus. Granted, it's a hero's death (he dies rescuing a child), and thus better than what happens to...
  
• Flash Thompson, a bully Peter knew in high school. He eventually becomes good friend with Peter afterwards. Which means that the Green Goblin has to punish him. A traffic accident is arranged, in which Flash is seriously brain damaged. Not that it's that noticeable.

And so on and so forth. It's pretty clear that, like Thomas Magnum, Mike Hammer, and Jessica Fletcher, if you know Peter, you're going to get in some sort of trouble.

But all of this is window dressing compared to the murder of Gwen Stacy. See, Gwen was the One, the girl Peter was going to marry, if he could only figure out a way of telling her he was Spider-man. As she blamed Spider-man for the death of her father, the aforementioned George Stacy, this seemed never to be. Only, in time, she forgave Spider-man, and everything seemed swell again...

Just in time for Harry Osborn's dating life to go into the crapper. Upset, he goes back to the tender care of LCD like the little twit he was. More bad trips, more thrashing about. No wonder he comes to a bad end later on in life.

His father takes this badly. Already stressed by problems at work, Norman starts looking for someone to blame. He lashes out at Harry's friends. They should have been watching out for his boy. Especially that Parker. Oh how he hated that Parker...

Unsurprisingly, the memories of being the Green Goblin return to Norman, and with them comes a focus for his hatred. It's all Parker's fault. Norman dons his costume and heads off to find Peter and continue their struggle.

He finds Gwen instead.

Spider-man, desperate to save his love, finds her with the Green Goblin atop the George Washington Bridge. After an exchange of words, the Goblin knocks his captive over the side, sending her plummeting toward the water below. Acting on instinct, Peter sends out a web-line... but it doesn't do any good. By that point, even if he had jumped after her, she would have died.

Gwen Stacy was doomed.

And from that point on, so was Norman Osborn and his son. Norman would soon be killed in a battle with Spider-man, hoisted by his on petard much like as seen in the movie version. Harry, still suffering from his trip, stumbles over his father's remains. Again, Spider-man is blamed, and he swears vengeance. An oath that would lead him, like his father, to madness and death.

But that was what lay ahead, and besides the point. The death of Gwen Stacy, like the death of Ben Parker, was a major turning point in Peter's history. It underscored Spider-man's basic theme, that with great power comes great responsibility. If Peter had, again, acted, had he risked being discovered and got Norman the help he needed, then Gwen would have lived.

It was that simple. A powerful, important lesson.

One arrogance and foolishness have in recent years utterly ruined.

The included images comes are © by the DC and Marvel, respectively, if no one else
It is in no way the work of Cullen M. M. Waters