She’s a typical high school overachiever, but she’s more than that. She’s been getting straight A’s while running for class president and trying to gather scholarships for college. And she’s the daughter of an NYC police officer being who is being framed by criminals. Now, in addition to everything else, she’s going to use everything at her disposal to clear the name of her father in Gwen Stacy #2. Writer Christos Gage continues an exploration into the life of Gwen Stacy pre-Peter Parker in another issue drawn with nuanced detail by Todd Nauck. The life of a particularly driven high school girl in the Marvel Universe continues to sparkle with flashes of cleverness around the edges in its second issue.

Gwen Stacy knows a little something about a police investigation. She also knows more than a little about how to clear her father’s name. She may not have the full pool or resources she needs to really dive into an investigation of the frame-up. But thanks to her good friend Harry Osborn, she has access to advanced crime scene modeling software that’s being tested by Oscorp, headed by his father, who only happens to also be the Green Goblin. Matters for Gwen are only going to get more and more complicated in the second issue of her promising new series.

Gage continues to make a compelling case for a pre-Parker Gwen Stacy as an action hero. He’s successfully avoiding the traditional pitfalls in telling a Nancy Drew-style mystery by fusing Stacy’s story so deeply with Spider-Man’s end of the Marvel Universe. It’s a very distinct flavor of overachieving high school girl heroism that Stacy’s engaging in. The normal person in the shadow of Marvel Super Heroes milieu is really tricky to get right, but Gage is definitely putting things together in an engrossing second issue.

Nauck’s grasp of drama is every bit as dynamic as it needs to be to carry an entire issue without much in the way of actual physical action. The overwhelming menace of Norman Osborn is palpable even outside the presence of his alter ego. The interpersonal drama between Gwen and Harry and her boyfriend is tangible. There’s a real sense of danger in Nauck’s juxtaposition of Gwen against the Enforcers that makes them feel that much more menacing than they had ever managed to be in the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man that they first appeared in. 

Gage and Nauck give a powerless Gwen Stacy plenty of room to move. It’s a hell of a challenge to deliberately force a supporting character into the center like this. Still, Gwen has proven over the years that she’s every bit as appealing a character without powers as she is in an alternate dimension as the Ghost-Spider. That being said, the real challenge for Gage in the months to come is going to lie in continuing to tell a story about an everyday high school girl growing up in the Marvel Universe. It’s easy enough to wrap Gwen up in drama with her father for the first few issues, but sooner or later she’s going to need to define herself a bit more. THAT could be a challenge.

Grade: A-