women in refrigerators

so lets continue from that cliff-hanger ending

as i am sure you are all desperate to know what happens next!

y'see, i didn't even realise at the time the comics were published that Kyle Rayner's significant other ended up sharing space with Green Lantern's milk and sandwich ham, and i had no clue that her bizarre death actually served as a springboard for a movement that focussed on the humiliating, severe or just plain old tragic circumstances that see so many female comic book characters suffering.

the Women in Refrigerator movement saw a list produced of superheriones and female supporting cast members that had been "either depowered, raped, or cut up and stuck in the refrigerator", those on the list of particular relevance to my own reading habits and my own blogging include Barbara Gordon's Batgirl (who was paralised and tortured at the hands of The Joker), Donna Troy (who seems to get a pretty bum deal everytime there is a universe wide shake-up) and other DC heriones such as Wonder Woman, Huntress, Black Canary, Jade, Starfire and Zattana seem to have been abused, raped and stripped of powers between them all.

and there is also the saga of Gwen Stacy, Spiderman's squeeze that met an unfortunate end when Spidey's attempt to save here ended in the worst possible way.

I love that Gail Simone (who went on to write, among other comic books, Wonder Woman, Action Comics and Birds Of Prey) got her knickers in a twist in such a huge, attention grabbing way, and i love that the whole premise of the argument is based on a hacked up female that has been rammed into a fridge.

Some of the points are entirely valid, and some points are irrelevant to me, but i can't help but feel, particularly wth the case in point Kyle Rayner, that for the sake of the story, and to properly convey the desired effect, those closest to the hero will suffer.

Perhaps i have missed the point slightly, and i will agree that there are a sizeable number of instances where female characters seem to miss out on all the luck, but losing parents at a young age or even losing your parents, your home planet and the entire race you belonged to are still gonna be pretty tough on the guys too.

is it any wonder?

i think i'm finally coming to terms with the fact that i am getting older, i don't like it one bit, and it has been very hard for me to deal with, and with all things considered i still don't feel like an adult

and aging is a part of my latest gripe, obviously since i am now an adult and extremely grown up i have been reading an awful lot of comics recently (obviously!), trying to catch up with events in the DC universe, and i have just finished Infinite Crisis tie-in 'The Return of Donna Troy' from back in '05



The character was created in 1965 as Wondergirl (45 years ago) and has had her own back-story changed numerous times since to keep up with an everchanging retconned universe and has had her history tied (and then untied - and then tangled?) to that of Wonder Woman, who herself suffered retcon woes at the hands of higher editorial powers

in their 1994 attempt to untangle any existing mess and lay everything in order, DC devised Zero Hour, which culminated in everything being hunky dory and even printed a definitive time-line




So Donna Troy began operating as Wondergirl 8 years ago, according to 1994s Zero Hour retconned time-line, with the Teen Titans forming a year later (which makes the years in question 1986 and 1987 respectively).

In the story i've just read (from 2005) Donna comments that she has two failed marriages and she's not even 25



so lets put this in a little perspective then, Donna Troy was created before i was born but in some crazy comics continuity (possibly like dog years i'm guessing) she has only been operating since i was 3, when she would have been a teenager and then eight years elapsed between then and the events of zero hour in 1994.

i read Zero Hour when i was 11 (by which point Donna would have been 20-ish?)

and then in a 2005 story (published 11 years after Zero Hour) she was probably 24, which means that at that time Donna Troy was a couple of years older than me.

which leaves me startlingly disturbed that i seem to be hurtling further towards my eventual demise while the characters that i have read about are now enjoying a slow aging process.

ok, anyone still with me after that bizarre little alienating rant?

it must be a comics thing.

stay tuned for some more music talk...