Few events have shaken Spider-Man like Gwen Stacy's death. The idea of permanently killing a superhero's love interest was exactly the kind of bold move that made Marvel such a dominant cultural force in the '60s and '70s. While Gwen Stacy has been cloned and had alternate universe versions pop up, The Night Gwen Stacy Died was such an impactful story that the original Gwen Stacy has never been resurrected. That doesn't mean Marvel hasn't retconned Spider-Man's most iconic story though, and none of those retcons are as stomach-churning as Spider-Man: Sins Past, which reveals that Gwen Stacy had children with the Green Goblin.
The 2004 storyline sees Peter Parker being threatened by two masked figures who hate both him and Spider-Man. Peter eventually learns that the two attacking him are none other than Gabriel and Sarah Stacy, the two children of Gwen Stacy. When Peter talks to Mary Jane about this, she breaks down and tells him that, not only did she know Gwen Stacy had children, but that she also knows who their father is. To Peter's devastation, Gwen Stacy had children with Norman Osborn.
Though this revelation has several problems from a timeline perspective, the comic attempts to justify it. There was a brief period where Peter traveled to Canada and Gwen traveled to France, which is apparently when she gave birth to the twins. Sarah and Gabriel both grew at an accelerated rate due to inheriting Norman's tainted blood. Despite Gwen's attempts to gain custody of her children and raise them with Peter, Norman took custody of them after he killed Gwen. He raised them to believe that Peter Parker was their father and that he had abandoned them, which is why Sarah and Gabriel hate Peter so much.
The twins would eventually learn the truth about their parentage, which would lead to Sarah forgiving Peter. Unfortunately the same can't be said for Gabriel, who embraced Norman's legacy, becoming Grey Goblin after taking a serum to halt his rapid aging. Sarah made one appearance in the sequel to Sins Past, Sins Remembered. Gabriel would go on to appear in the short-lived series, American Son where he wore the eponymous battle suit and suffered from dissociative identity disorder. Though the two characters haven't been referenced in more than a decade, they're still part of Marvel canon, much to their creator's chagrin.
What's amazing about the entire mess is that the story's writer, J. Michael Straczynski, almost immediately realized what a mistake he made. The prolific Spider-Man writer had originally pitched Gabriel and Sarah as Peter's children but was quickly shot down by Marvel editorial. After the story released, Straczynski tried to retcon Sins Past out of continuity with the contentious One More Day but was again told no by Marvel's editors.
Obviously, the story's biggest problem is its gross premise. Not only is Norman Osborn significantly older than Gwen Stacy, but he was also her boss, making the entire affair as gross as possible. Additionally, the story has a large problem with its focus. Everything that happens in the story is a direct result of the things Gwen did and the things that were done to her, yet Peter is the main character. If Peter were actually the father, as originally intended, then Peter's involvement in the story would be more justified, but that's not what happened. The result isn't the tragedy of a young woman who lost her life to a predatory old man, but instead the story of how it all made the young woman's boyfriend sad. Gwen Stacy didn't like Peter when they first met, and given how self-centered this story makes him seem, it's not difficult to see why.
Marvel has only recently started to do Gwen Stacy justice with her reinvention as Spider-Gwen, but it's telling how much the character had to endure before becoming a hero. Sins Past might not be the worst Spider-Man story, but it is undeniably one of the grossest.
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