Gail Simone's 'Women In Refrigerators'

Gail Simone first got attention for a list called “Women in Refrigerators”, which stood against demeaning plot schemes against women. Her intuitive ideas and considerable contributions to multimillion-dollar entertainment companies such as Marvel and DC comics are attributed to her film studies in college and of course - shear talent. According to DC Comics, she also became well known for a popular humor column called “You’ll Be Sorry” which was featured on Comic Book Resources. Soon after she got the opportunity to write for Bongo Comics writing The Simpsons comic scripts, which then ushered her into mainstream writing for DC Comic’s “Deadpool”. “In the years since the “Women in Refrigerators” list was published, Simone has become one of the
For example, the notorious Green Lanterns #54 (1999) comic, the comic script that actually inspired the Women in Refrigerator list. A scene in the comic depicts The Green Lantern picking up a note which reads “Surprise for you in the fridge- Love, A”. The following scene, he opens the fridge to find the body of his beloved girlfriend- dismembered like mere poultry. Other victims that Gail included in her list are: Christine Helvin (victim of date rape, discovered she could never have children because she was no longer human), Ilyana Rasputin (kidnapped, raised by demons, aged, de-aged, died), Marlo Chandler- Risk Jones’s wife (former prostitute, killed and brought back mindless; got better) and Star Fire (raped, tortured, enslaved, forced into marriage twice). After viewing Gail Simon’s full list of battered female super heroes an anonymous fan stated: “Not every woman in comics has been killed, raped, and depowered, crippled, tortured, contracted disease or had other derailing tragedies befall her, but given the falling list (originally compiled by Gail with later additions and changes), it is hard to think up
And it had been nagging me for a while that in mainstream comics, being a girl meant inevitably being killed, maimed or depowered, it seemed.” (Simone, Gail.1999). She began to investigate her speculations. Gail wrote letters to many mainstream comic writers and what is rare in today’s society – they actually responded back to her. “Several respondents mentioned that male super heroes also get cut up, and killed up- undeniable truth I say” (Simone, Gial.1999). Brian Augustyn, who worked on “The Flash” and “Gotham Gaslight”, responded to her list by saying “I am not surprised by the size of your assembled list, though I doubt there is any conscious intent on the part of the creators.” Tony Isabella, whom Gail described as being “one of the nicest guys in comics- he isn’t really that bloodthirsty”, wrote “Blank Lightning”, “Shadow War of Hawkman” and several other Marvel series. Tony’s response was this: “Violence towards women has been used in comics much as it has in movies and on television…for shock value. I suppose I am somewhat guilty myself, having killed off Betty Dean at Marvel and Marvis Trent at DC. In both cases, the deaths were setting up stuff for future stories, but I still did them in.” He continued, “Maybe it’s because the readers are mostly male and the creators are afraid of doing anything drastic