‘Amazing Spider-Man’ #26 proves comics haven’t come very far since Alex DeWitt’s fridging • AIPT

The history of comics is such that nothing’s ever buried, and things roar back to life faster than Kal-El himself.

One of the most infamous events comes from 1994’s Green Lantern #54, where Kyle Rayner comes home to find his girlfriend, Alex DeWitt, murdered and stuffed in his refrigerator. Responding to this in 1999, writer Gail Simone coined the term “fridging” when she and her colleagues made a list of women who were killed, injured, or otherwise harmed in order to push a male character’s story forward. This wasn’t the first or last time a woman would be treated as disposable for a male character’s story, but it was the beginning of a movement.

Women in Refrigerators was a landmark website that highlighted the problem comics have historically had with disposing women and treating them as plot devices for the male lead. In 2023, “fridging” is a concept that has pushed past comics altogether and is used as a critique of media at-large and the way female characters are treated. Some universities, like Washington State University, even use content in “Women in Refrigerators” in media analysis.

Alex being stuffed in Kyle’s fridge wasn’t the first incident of a woman being killed or gravely injured to further a male character’s plot, but it was the straw that broke the camel’s back –after all, Simone and her colleagues needed a host of examples to prove how large of a problem this was. Many creators have gone on record saying that this concept made them think twice about what they were writing and how they treated their female characters, which is exactly the kind of response they should have.

It’s doubtful that the team behind Amazing Spider-Man #26 are among those creatives who reflected on the treatment of female characters because they may as well have shoved Kamala Khan in a refrigerator, too.

Violence against women is our every day. To be a woman is to grow up being told you can’t walk home alone at night. Ask any woman you know about the first time she was catcalled on the street then stalked on her way home by men who wouldn’t leave her alone — I was 12 years old coming home from swim team practice. Last week alone, I feared for my life because I was coming home from a concert and waiting for my Uber as a car with two men pulled up to me and asked repeatedly if I was alone, whistling at me and replying with obscenities.

Some 1 in 4 women are victims of intimate partner violence (with 1 in 3 experiencing physical violence from a partner), and 1 in 5 women are raped. When women are killed so callously with zero regard for their characters in the fiction we read, it’s a reminder that our hobbies and the things we love care as little for our safety as the real world does. Even being in nerd spaces, I’ve been the target of sexual predators and men who refuse to learn the meaning of “No, I’m not interested.” We may love comics, but comics don’t love us, and if Kamala Khan, Marvel’s popular teenage hero next to Miles Morales can’t get a sliver of respect in her death which female heroes can? Can the fictional Marvel world, a place where heroes prevail and evil dies, love us more than the real world?

In the last few days, I’ve also come to realize how little comics fans and professionals actually know what fridging is. And that feels like the icing on the cake to prove to us how little this space cares about us because these resources aren’t hard to find. It’s not that the conversation doesn’t exist or that we haven’t talked about this enough –it’s that you aren’t listening. We are begging you to listen.

Female characters are allowed to die. They’re allowed to get hurt. Neither of these things are all that encompasses fridging. Phoenix Endsong was Jean Grey’s farewell to comics until 2017 brought her back, and it’s easily my favorite Jean Grey story ever. Sersi is one of my favorite Avengers, and her death in Judgment Day was well handled and made me emotional for losing her, but not outraged at her treatment in the slightest. It’s the difference between having a story be a send-off for a character that puts her at the front and honors her as any other hero and killing a character as a plot device for someone else. These women died as the (temporary) final step of their own arcs and were honored justly. But the same cannot be said for Kamala Khan in Amazing Spider-Man #26.

“Fallen Friend” was advertised so much as this big, shocking death and for months — we all thought it would be Mary Jane Watson on the chopping block. I wouldn’t have loved to see Mary Jane die, but she is a Spider-Man character, and so her death occurring in a Spider-Man comic would at least be natural. But Kamala Khan is a solo character — she’s the leader of the Champions — and you could count every single one of her appearances in Spider-Man on one hand.

Kamala isn’t a Peter castmate — if anything, the Spider-Man she’s closer to is Miles. But from the start, this death has been treated as a shocking reveal and advertised as a Spider-Man event, a character she has virtually no ties to. Even the title of her death strips her agency from her –she’s “Fallen Friend,” an event that says “someone’s friend died.” And in case you forgot that this death was for Peter first and foremost, here’s the cover:

It’s almost laughable that the variant cover teased at the end of Amazing Spider-Man #26 is the one that actually focuses on Kamala, the superhero who actually died. The variant cover. She gets a variant cover because the main cover needs you to know this is Peter’s story about Peter’s sadness.

Ms. Marvel, Jersey’s hero, and Marvel Comics’ first Muslim superhero to headline her own series, broke boundaries and ushered in an entire slew of new readers — and her death can’t even focus on her. In 2014, I was still rather new to comics and had just finished backreading years of trades of X-Men when Ms. Marvel came out. I remember how many headlines she made and how many of my friends, some of whom were purely DC readers at the time, read Ms. Marvel. I hadn’t heard a single bad thing about the book, and once I read it, I learned why. Ms. Marvel was so beloved that it didn’t shock me that the MCU wanted to adapt the property despite it being rather new comparatively. It was a moment in pop culture history and a breath of fresh air. And she can’t get a book with her name on it for her death?

No, death in comics is nothing new, but at least when Doctor Strange or Wolverine died they each got their own “Death of” events that built up to that moment and showcased them. Hell, even when Ultimate Peter Parker died, he was front and center of his own cover and in his own book, which is more than Kamala is getting. Death of Doctor Strange miniseries…Death of Wolverine…Peter Parker’s “fallen friend.” Ms. Marvel dies in just another issue of Spider-Man, not even an event or anything with her own name on it. Just a Spider-Man issue.

Peter’s death issue had him front and center, a shadow looming over his loved ones who realize he’s no longer there and must live without him. Kamala’s cover has her in the upper righthand corner, amid a hero she’s never met (the Thing), one she barely knows (Steve), two of her mentors (Carol and Tony), and a hero she interacted with once (Wolverine), but the focus is on Peter Parker, the biggest subject on the image. This cover is just emblematic of how little everyone involved cared about this character and her legacy –she’s there to make Peter Parker sad. Peter’s pain is the focus of this story, and the reason she died was give him another thing to be sad about. Her death is meant to motivate Spider-Man and be another source of grief for the hero. But how many women have to die for Peter’s guilt complex?

Gwen Stacy died in June 1973, and Kamala’s death occurs 50 years later. Gwen’s death was certainly a vital component in why Zeb Wells and company decided to kill of Kamala now — and in a Spider-Man comic of all places. In his interview with Popverse about Amazing Spider-Man #26, Wells notes this death was “the most shocking event to happen to Spider-Man in 50 years.” Shock value was at the forefront for this story, and the way these creatives talked about killing Kamala feels eerily reminiscent of how writers have infamously talked about fridging characters in the past. Wells was laughing in his interview about how many people would be mad at him and when asked how editorial reacted, he’d mostly mentioned them being “shocked” but pleased. Wells replied, “Nick [Lowe]’s a mad man, so he was completely down…I’m very excited for people to read issue #26.”

In these comments, I’m reminded of how Gerry Conway killed Gwen Stacy all those years ago — the shock value death these men wanted to celebrate by killing off another woman in a way that was just as unexpected. Conway “grinned and explained” his idea behind killing Gwen, adding, “She and Peter are terrific together and make each other happy. But that’s not what Spider-Man is about. It’s about pain and power and the responsibility that comes with it. There’s nowhere to take the relationship without betraying what Spider-Man is about.”

Gwen died so Peter could be motivated by his guilt because in their eyes — this guilt and pain is what Spider-Man was all about. In the aftermath of Amazing Spider-Man #121, Peter blames himself for her death and goes to a very dark place. Gwen’s death is something that haunts him for years to come because that was all Gwen’s death was meant to be: pain for Peter. She was disposable for him to move forward as a character.

I’m also reminded of another one of the most infamous fridgings of all time, Barbara Gordon in The Killing Joke. In a 2006 interview with Wizard Magazine, writer Alan Moore recalled how the storyline with Barbara Gordon (which he now regrets) came about. He said, “I asked DC if they had any problem with my crippling Barbara Gordon –who was Batgirl at the time– and if I remember, I spoke to Len Wein, who was our editor on the project…[he] said, ‘Yeah, okay, cripple the bitch.’ It was probably one of the areas where they should’ve reined me in, but they didn’t.”

Now, years later, Gwen Stacy’s death has been used in retrospect to propel Mary Jane’s character forward as well, giving her extra depth and allowing a friendship between the two women to flourish in more modern retellings/stories set in the past. Barbara shows up in a handful of panels in The Killing Joke but is ultimately sexually assaulted, shot, and traumatized to propel Jim Gordon’s character and hammer home the story’s message of “one bad day” making a villain.

Like Gwen and MJ, Barbara’s horrendous treatment in The Killing Joke had its own lemonade of lemons of sorts when Kim Yale and John Ostrander created Oracle, the badass disabled hero who took s–t from no one. Oracle was an integral part of the DC Universe for years, and disabled fans were able to see themselves in a new hero. Something good only came of these events because of how other writers touched these stories (and after the outrage hit), but that doesn’t make the initial story less terrible as a standalone.

“Cripple the bitch.” “That’s not what Spider-Man is about.” And somehow, this is the thought process for how women are used in comics in 2023? There’s few things more grim. Barbara was hurt in a Batman book. Gwen was killed in a Spider-Man comic. Kamala, a standalone hero with a cast of her own was killed in a Spider-Man comic –and yes, all for Peter’s pain because as Conway pointed out in the interview about why Gwen needed to die, the story Wells wanted to celebrate 50 years later, Spider-Man is “about pain and power and the responsibility that comes with it.”

I looked back at interviews from other writers while talking about their “Death of” books, like Jed Mackay on Death of Doctor Strange, and the difference is staggering. Mackay said, “Strange has been a Marvel fixture from the early days, but now, his time has run out and as a Strange fan, it’s been my bittersweet privilege to shepherd him through his last day and the effects that snowball out of it.” Mackay doesn’t focus on how shocking his death is or how much it will hurt the heroes around him –it’s about giving respect to a vital piece of the Marvel universe.

Meanwhile, on Death of Wolverine, Charles Soule said, “This ending in Death of Wolverine when he basically becomes a literal icon to me, it felt it was just more fitting because Wolverine is sort of an icon. So give him a send-off that that is appropriate for all the things he’s done and all the lives you’ve saved and he can sort of be inspiring to people in a different way.” It’s the difference between a desire to honor a character and their legacy and give them a good send off and “cripple the bitch.” Honoring Kamala, or giving her a worthy death in her own right, was never the priority — it was killing a woman near Peter in a more shocking way than Gwen had died 50 years ago.

And out of universe, yes, this death probably exists so the comics can bring her back as a mutant to match up with her MCU counterpart. And the insistence for MCU synergy is a whole different can of worms because, quite frankly, it’s stupid when MCU fans don’t read comics or want to read comics and these two properties can remain separate. But if Kamala has to die, she certainly deserved her own story. Why is her cast not present on the cover? Her parents? Her friends? Her teammates on the Champions? Why is she not a bigger agent in her own story? Why does she not get a miniseries or event that highlights her like Logan and Stephen did?

Within the story itself, it’s almost insulting to have Kamala, who learned what it meant to be a hero from her family and community throughout the events of Ms. Marvel volume one, suddenly seek validation for her heroism from Spider-Man. Kamala’s survived getting shot in her first volume, and so how Rabin’s blade killed her I don’t understand. Still, I realize I don’t have to because Lowe and Wells don’t want me to. Because this is about Peter — the point is that by the end of the book, Peter is sad and Peter got to tell her she was a good hero because what could be more of an honor than the guy you barely know validating your heroism when you die for his ex-girlfriend?

Kamala’s death also exists on an axis where she isn’t just another women being fridged for a man’s pain and growth, but this is another case of a character of color being carelessly discarded for a white character’s growth. And just as fridging is a problem that plagues how women are portrayed in media, characters of color are also disproportionately killed or injured to spur on their white loved ones.

Expendable and used to further white character’s stories. Whatever the ‘master plan’ is, Kamala was brought into ASM and got k-lled to make Peter sad. Period. Same thing with Rhodey’s death in Civil War II, it was just to make Tony and Carol sad and further THEIR stories pic.twitter.com/d3iRd4PBcF

— (INSERT BLACK CHARACTER) Deserves Better (@GL2814_3) May 17, 2023

Kamala is a woman of color, and her death and how it’s been handled and advertised proved once again to so many fans of color and women that our stories will never matter to the people writing them. We will always be expendable. We can beg and plead to be heard, but it falls on deaf ears time and time again. It’s disheartening to see how many comics pros and comics fans decried the issue as being fans simply not knowing death isn’t permanent — or believing that fridging is just the mere death of a woman and not how she or her story has been handled. We have been telling you the problem since 1999 and you tune us out. You assume we simply don’t know comics when the truth is you don’t know how comics are for us. But we know how comics are for you –these stories that celebrate and valorize the characters who look like you that we read then witness the ones who look like us treated as disposable.

In Deadpool 2, the conversation of fridging came back around when Vanessa Carlysle was fridged to further Deadpool’s development, and the writers literally admitted to not knowing what fridging is. These writers knew enough about comics controversy and criticism to know niche jokes about how Rob Liefeld can’t draw feet but didn’t know one of the most famous critiques in the history of comics? None of this is hard to find, you just aren’t looking for it.

A lot of comics professionals and fans need to start asking themselves why they aren’t reading female critics, or talking to women in the industry or in fan spaces about what matters to us. They need to start asking fans of color what matters to them and listening to their critiques. They need to start talking to their colleagues and peers because “Women in Refrigerators” was started by Gail Simone and countless creators of color have been vocal about the treatment of their characters, too.

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage month, and Marvel knew that when they tweeted Kamala to celebrate the start of AAPI month. Amazing Spider-Man #26 came out on May 31, killing off their most prominent South Asian hero just in time to wrap up AAPI month.

What’s your favorite Ms. Marvel quote? In honor of #AAPIHeritageMonth, follow teenage heroic sensation Kamala Khan as she fights to save Jersey City, her friends, the world, and so much more in these #MarvelComics: pic.twitter.com/1WP66bwZiZ

— Marvel Entertainment (@Marvel) May 2, 2023

Many Muslim fans have already pointed out that Kamala’s dying words should have been the declaration of Muslim creed. I am not Muslim, and so I cannot speak more about this detail, but I think it does further show how little research was done for this story and how little care everyone on this team had for her character and story.

First of all this is trash. Second if a Muslim characters dying words are anything other than the shahada (declaration of the Muslim creed) that would be extremely offensive and proves you couldn’t have done the tiniest bit of research. https://t.co/8feZx7s5VM

— watchwithneebz (@watchwithneebz) May 16, 2023

All Lowe and the team on Spider-Man have done is tell female readers and nonwhite fans that we do not matter to them. Our cries for better do not matter because they do not listen. And if you won’t listen, why am I buying comics? Why do we engage with a hobby that so clearly hates us? After all, the minute this character’s death was announced, artist Ethan Van Sciver and his followers, who operate on a platform of bigotry, celebrated because her death signaled the death of a “woke” character. And remember, to the hateful, being a woman or being brown makes you “woke,” so all they were happy about was a dead teenage brown girl. Marvel knew exactly who would be cheering on her death and who this was appealing to — and it was never us.

Had Ms. Marvel died in her own series or gotten her own Death Of… miniseries like the other heroes get, I doubt the comicsgate crowd would be pleased — because that is a story that was made to honor her as a hero and a character. That is the story you want to read so you can say “My favorite character had a good death”. But the one they put out respects us as little as comicsgate does –it laughs at us with them.

Kamala Khan will be back, but her death signified a death of optimism for so many of us. It showed me that this hobby space — one where I have been targeted by sexual predators, hounded by men who don’t know the meaning of the words “I’m not interested,” and consistently talked down to while buying comics because they assume I don’t know comics when I likely know more than they do — will never truly want me. It’s one that will never welcome me no matter how many statues or comics I buy, and it’s one that will never listen to me or think twice about how they are treating their characters like me before editing or writing a story.

Kamala’s death made me realize how badly I want my love of comics to somehow die too because I can’t keep giving so much of my heart to something that does not love me, too.