Comic Books: Women in Refigerators
Yeah, it's a really slow day at work....

A message board I visit had this link to Women in Refigerators, a website that lists the tragic fates of several female characters in comic books. Much like black superheroes, the female characters in comics have often been handled poorly by (often male) comic book writers. While I think that the website misses out on the fact that many, many male characters go through the ringer too, there is a good point here. Too often, writers try to create drama in comics by doing somthing really tragic to a character.

Perhaps the reason it seems to happen more often to women is that the writers often don't know how to write women and go to the cheap dramatic effect: tragedy. I certainly don't think it's anything sinister or that the writers are glorifying violence against women. I also don't think it's like WiR suggests, that the male audience likes this stuff. (I don't know one guy who said it was cool when Kyle Rayner's girlfriend was stuffed in the fridge in Green Lantern. I think everyone was disgusted by that issue.)

I think this is one of the things I always appreciated about Superman. Writers couldn't just kill Lois Lane to make drama. There would be an uproar. So, Superman comics have always had to be create the drama without resorting to tactics like the infamous "woman-in-refigerator" issue that Ron Marz gave to Green Lantern. (Which brings me back to my point that they do this kinda crap to guys too. Ron Marz started his GL run but having Hal Jordan going crazy and killing his friends, The Green Lantern Corps. I don't call it sexist. It's just bad writing. Ron Marz has gotten a lot better over the years, but those early issues of his GL run were painful to read.) With Superman, DC has always had to put the best writers they could on the comic because they know how hard it is to create drama for Mr. Invunerable when they can't even hurt the people he loves.


One of the interesting bits in the site is Nancy Collins' piece in which she says:

Although Sonja Blue is raped and is transformed by it into a vampire, her rape isn't a way of receiving her "power" from a male force, but an attempt to mirror the Maimed Hero. In many fables and legends the hero is given a defect/maiming necessary to surmount to come the hero (Oedipus, the Celtic guy with the silver hand I'm blanking on, King Arthur, Osiris). In some cases, the maiming is a sacrifice for knowledge (Odin), the badge of a warrior (the Amazons) or a means of disguising immense "inner" strength and ability (Papa Legba, Hepahestus, The Fisher King). However, you might notice few females in that list, except for the Amazons, who sacrificed a breast in order to be better archers. (Having caught a tit in a bow string, I can see why.) For women, a not-very-subtle symbolic form of maiming (i.e. loss of the self) is the rape. The rape is usually also symbolic in rendering the women sterile and therefore, placing her outside the "natural" reproductive role of womanhood, enables her to pursue the more masculine role of avenging warrior. Many of the Greek and Roman goddesses of vengeance (Nemesis, Ate, the Furies) were represented as either virgins or hags -- women who have yet to become part of the "bleeding sisterhood" or have passed beyond their fertile, nurturing years.

Which got me thinking about an unrelated topic: my interest in Nuadha (the silver handed guy that her mind blanked out on). I also really liked Osirus and Arthur (whom I guess could count as a maimed hero, although I never thought of him that way). Why do I like the Maimed Hero? Does it say something about me? If so, what?