Being a Spider-hero in the Marvel Multiverse means using your power responsibly -- but what happens to a hero with a profound sense of obligation? Especially when that hero hails from a world where there aren't as many superheroes to help, out and the villains are looking to exploit her noble nature? Plus, what sort of responsibility does this Spider hero have to themselves and the people in her life? Those were the central questions that fueled writer Jason Latour and artist Robbi Rodriguez's Spider-Gwen, a series set on alternate Earth where a radioactive spider bite transformed Gwen Stacy into Spider-Woman.

When Latour and Rodriguez's run on the series came to a close, they left their protagonist in very a interesting place. This October, novelist Seanan McGuire and artist Rosi Kampe kick off a new era for Gwen Stacy with the launch of Spider-Gwen: Ghost-Spider, which finds their title character dealing with her identity being public knowledge, her universe's version of the Venom symbiote, a brand new codename, and the cross-dimensional Spider event, Spider-Geddon. CBR spoke with McGuire about her plans for the series.

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CBR: You're coming into comics a successful prose novelist, and from some of your comments on Twitter, it's pretty clear you have an emotional connection to Gwen Stacy. How much of a dream job is it for you to write this new era of Gwen's life? What did the original Spider-Gwen run mean to you?

EXCLUSIVE: A look inside Spider-Gwen: Ghost-Spider #1 by Rosi Kampe and Ian Herring

Seanan McGuire: It's absolutely a dream job to get to write for Gwen Stacy. Just setting aside for a moment who Spider-Gwen has become, the 616 version of Gwen was super important to me as a kid. When she died I stopped reading Spider-Man comics. Because, how dare you? She's that classic female character who died not because of any choices she made, but to push forward the story of the male character she interacts with. And when I first saw Gwen die I had never encountered that before. I thought comic book characters always got to die because of what they did, not because of what other people did. That was not a great revelation for me.

If you go back and look at think pieces from [when Spider-Gwen was introduced], many of them ask is Spider-Gwen the breakout star?” I was like, “Because every woman who's ever been reading Marvel for any length of time is standing on their chair and screaming at the top of their lungs right now.” She's giving us back something that we never voluntarily lost.

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Jason Latour and Robbi Rodriguez left Gwen in an interesting emotional place at the end of their run. What's your sense of Gwen when you pick up with her? Which of her qualities are you especially interested in exploring?

Out of all of the Spider-People, including Peter Parker, Gwen Stacy has the most over-developed sense of responsibility. So there's a lot of what does that look like? And how do you balance having that sense of responsibility with the knowledge that there's a multiverse out there? How do you keep them down on the farm when they've seen the rest of the world? And also how do you leave the farm when no one else knows how to feed the cows?

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Another interesting development at the end of the last Spider-Gwen run is that Gwen's identity is not really a secret anymore. What does that mean for the types of stories you can tell in Spider-Gwen: Ghost-Spider?

EXCLUSIVE: A look inside Spider-Gwen: Ghost-Spider #1 by Rosi Kampe and Ian Herring

You do have to approach it a bit differently. It's not in the same sense, but it's kind of like dealing with some of the X-Men, where they can't have a secret identity unless they really work at it. That's going to be fascinating to explore. I can't really say much about the specific types of stories I'm working on, but I do have to take that into account all the time. People know who she is.

You can't put that genie back in the bottle either. You'd have to do all these things that would make sense for some of the Spider-People, but, again, Gwen has that exaggerated sense of responsibility. Look at what happens to her at the end of the Latour and Rodriguez run. She voluntarily goes to prison. She's not going to say, “Oops, I shouldn't have done that. Guess I'll get Doctor Strange to put everything back the way it was.” That just doesn't work for her.

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While we're on the topic of identities, let's chat about Gwen's new codename, Ghost-Spider, which is the moniker used by her Marvel Rising incarnation. Will we see the origin of this new code name in your story?

We will definitely see the origin of that. Up until that very last page of the Latour-Rodriguez run, her code name was never anything close to Spider-Gwen. It can't be. What's the point of having a secret identity, then? So what we had that whole time was a book with a character whose code name was not in the title. That's confusing. More than that, though, from an in-universe perspective, the Spiders have these cross-dimensional adventures. There was the Web Warriors, and now Spider-Geddon is coming up. So what happens if someone is swinging at Gwen and you shout, “Spider-Woman look out!”? How many members of your team just hit the floor?

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Gwen's costume -- which is perfect -- has always had that white aesthetic, which means the name “Ghost-Spider” fits her look. We don't have to do any rebranding of the physical character, which is good because it would be silly and ridiculous to want to change the way she looks. Her costume was such a home run from day one.

EXCLUSIVE: A look inside Spider-Gwen: Ghost-Spider #1 by Rosi Kampe and Ian Herring

We already have the visuals to get us to Ghost-Spider, and we're going to have some in character beats that make it make sense. We're not going to go on page one, “I'm Gwen Stacy, but now everybody calls me Ghost-Spider.” We're actually getting there organically through the events of the story. I'm really excited about them.

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Writing Ghost-Spider means you get to tackle a lot of fascinating character dynamics. One of my favorites is Gwen and her dad. To me they're almost like Keith and Veronica Mars. What do you enjoy most about their dynamic?

The fact that they are very much like Keith and Veronica Mars. I like that once Captain Stacy got over his concern that Gwen was going to get hurt he was like, “I can either be afraid that I'm going to lose my daughter and maybe I'll lose her because I push her away. Or I can be a supportive father and at least be a part of these wacked out things she's doing.”

Their relationship is so solid. I love that Jason and Robbi didn't kill him. I really thought they were going to at various points, and she doesn't need an Uncle Ben. She already has other experiences that brought her to the place of being a responsible person. What she needs is her father. She needs someone who will always love Gwen first and not Spider-Woman. Because that's another possible concern of her being out of the superhero closet as it were.

How is she ever going to date? Everybody knows she's Spider-Woman. And talk about the cape chasers!

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Another interesting dynamic that wasn't fully fleshed out by the end of the previous run is the relationship between Gwen and her reality's version of the Venom symbiote. Is that something you're interested in exploring?

I don't honestly think that there's much of a choice. She and the Venom are bonded; it’s presently the thing that’s giving her her Spider-powers -- at least for now! So we're absolutely going to have to deal with that. We’re going to be telling some foundational stories first, exploring Earth-65 at our own pace. But, we can't ignore it without doing a disservice to the character and the creative run that came before us.

I imagine since this is Earth-65, you get to add your own spin on Venom.

Exactly! Her Venom is not same as the 616's Venom. And, at least right now, her Venom is very much on her side. At least as much as it can be. We don’t know much about it right now – even if it’s “alive” in any traditional sense, even if she is how it survives. That's going to be interesting for her as she realizes the long term ramifications of that, but since it's also the source of her powers, I'm not anticipating wanting to mess with it too much. Because an unpowered Spider-Person is just kind of boring.

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EXCLUSIVE: A look inside Spider-Gwen: Ghost-Spider #1 by Rosi Kampe and Ian Herring

Of course, the other fun part of this book's Earth-65 setting is the freedom to introduce familiar yet distinctly different takes on other iconic Marvel characters.

Oh, yeah! One of the things I love best about Marvel is the What If? factor; being able to just say, “Today we're going to explore a world where Magneto and Emma never gave back the X-Men. Or a world where Mary Jane shares Peter's powers.” So being able to do that is just super exciting.

You're working with artist whose work I'm not super familiar with, Rosi Kampe. It looks like she has a style similar to Robbi Rodriguez's, but still very much her own.

I love that her Gwen Stacy looks like a girl in her early '20s. She's not drawn like she's still a teenager because she can't be one anymore. The end of Jason and Robbi’s run gave us the proof that Gwen is in her early '20s. She’s still young, and she’s still going to be making mistakes (because who doesn’t?), but her story is moving forward, her life is moving forward, and Rosi has done such a great job of illustrating that growth.

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We know Ghost-Spider will be a pivotal player in the upcoming Spider-Geddon event. Will that spill over into your series?

EXCLUSIVE: A look inside Spider-Gwen: Ghost-Spider #1 by Rosi Kampe and Ian Herring

My initial story is parallel to Spider-Geddon. We start out there, but things are going to get real bad for Gwen and she's not going to be able to be there for a little while to support her friends as they are fighting for their lives. The events in both books are going to have very real effects on her relationships with just about everyone across the Spider-Verse. So she's going to be a little frantic. She wants to get home, but she's going to have to deal with some problems where she winds up.

I love the Spider Universe and its people, but Ghost-Spider is kind of great because she's in this completely unique position. Peter is the grown up Spider. Miles is still the high school Spider. She's the first college age Spider in a while. She's our first Spider who is dealing with the question of in addition to being a superhero who do I want to grow up to be? That is going to be exciting to write and -- I hope -- to read.

[EDITOR: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.]