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C0mraid from Here and there Since: Aug, 2010
#26: Feb 16th 2012 at 10:30:40 AM

[up]x3 I agree with that.

The thing is, in my reading experience, I haven't really seen a difference in in the way male or females are killed or depowered. Some have been a waste of a character, others have served a function in some way. However gay characters really do seem to be treated in the way

How is a villain any more of a characterisation than love interest? By the time Norman died was he really more devolped than Gwen?

edited 16th Feb '12 10:33:13 AM by C0mraid

Am I a good man or a bad man?
KingZeal Since: Oct, 2009
#27: Feb 16th 2012 at 10:43:40 AM

Yes, he was. In fact, part of the problem with Gwen was that the writers couldn't figure out what to do with her.

C0mraid from Here and there Since: Aug, 2010
#28: Feb 16th 2012 at 12:11:45 PM

[up] Could you source that please?

Am I a good man or a bad man?
C0mraid from Here and there Since: Aug, 2010
#30: Feb 16th 2012 at 5:56:21 PM

Slightly misleading, that wasn't specificaly about the character but her relationship with Peter. That they were stuck between marriage, the relationship going too far without marriage or a breakup and not liking any of the options. Not that Conway had trouble writing the character specificaly.

Am I a good man or a bad man?
KingZeal Since: Oct, 2009
#31: Feb 16th 2012 at 5:59:21 PM

What part of "they didn't know what to do with the character" was misleading?

C0mraid from Here and there Since: Aug, 2010
#32: Feb 16th 2012 at 6:03:40 PM

[up] The fact that it doesn't quite fit with the text directly after it. I would have assumed that it meant there was difficulty with the character, not the relationship.

Am I a good man or a bad man?
KingZeal Since: Oct, 2009
#33: Feb 16th 2012 at 6:22:28 PM

The entire point is that they didn't know what to do with the character OUTSIDE of the relationship. She was Peter's girlfriend. That was it. They couldn't marry her to him, and they couldn't break them up, so they killed her. She was not a character outside of her relationship with the protagonist, and they had no role for her outside of this.

That's exactly what we're talking about.

Gerry Conway, writer of The Amazing Spider-Man #121, thought of Gwen Stacy as "sweet, beautiful, boring Gwen." Looking back on her place in the Marvel Comics universe in Death of the Stacys (2007), Conway wrote that "Gwen is only interesting now because she's dead, and because of the manner of her death."

http://luke-arnott.suite101.com/gwen-stacys-role-in-the-amazing-spider-man-a193410

edited 16th Feb '12 6:26:37 PM by KingZeal

Tiamatty X-Men X-Pert from Now on Twitter Since: Jan, 2010 Relationship Status: Brony
#34: Feb 16th 2012 at 6:51:48 PM

She was a supporting character to Peter. I'm sure they could've come up with some interesting stories for her, except that the relationship reached a problematic spot where the only options were getting them married or breaking them up, and there was no good way to break them up. Since Peter was the star, the stories of everyone else in the book necessarily revolved around him.

Though Conway's right that she was kind of a boring character. I've been reading those old Spider-Man comics. She had very little depth to her. She was a hot blonde with nice clothes (really, those were some seriously cool boots, and a cool coat). Her only character trait was being in love with Peter.

She could've been interesting. But she never was.

X-Men X-Pert, my blog where I talk about X-Men comics.
NapoleonDeCheese Since: Oct, 2010
#35: Feb 16th 2012 at 7:03:18 PM

I have a really hard time believing a professional writer just couldn't come up with a believable way to break up two young characters, who were under a lot of superheroics-derived stress, to the point murdering the female half of the equation was the only option.

Like good young men and women never break up in real life, and that's even without all the loads of being Spider-Man on them.

edited 16th Feb '12 7:05:08 PM by NapoleonDeCheese

KingZeal Since: Oct, 2009
#36: Feb 17th 2012 at 12:45:22 PM

Well, remember, we're talking about a writing format that requires you to put out stories week by week. Also, consider that many of the genre conventions were extremely strict in those days and they didn't work on the same set of values that we're familiar with today.

Sijo from Puerto Rico Since: Jan, 2001
#37: Feb 17th 2012 at 7:38:25 PM

[up]I have to agree with De Cheese. Even back in the 70s, there was much criticism of the way many characters were killed off instead of being written off in more logical ways. I remember many fan letters decrying not just Gwen's death, but many other female characters'. If memory serves me right, Bruce Banner/The Hulk has had to suffer the death of at lest FOUR love interests over the decades (Princess Jarella, his scientist fiancee who got killed in Hulk#300 -can't remember her name right now, but then again she NEVER gets mentioned- Betty Ross (though that was undone later), and his alien wife in Planet Hulk (though at least in her case you could argue she was always meant to die just to make him madder ala Black Adam's Isis.) Doesn't anybody even bother to look at this series' past and realize how much they have abused the trope?

edited 17th Feb '12 7:40:04 PM by Sijo

KingZeal Since: Oct, 2009
#38: Feb 17th 2012 at 8:56:47 PM

There were letters decrying female characters' deaths before Gwen Stacy?

Sijo from Puerto Rico Since: Jan, 2001
#39: Feb 18th 2012 at 8:32:16 AM

[up]IDK if before as I started reading Marvel Comics after Gwen's Death, but there were some in the 70s, believe me. Jarella's death was particularly hated. Also for some male supporting characters like Gwen's father or Hulk's Major Talbott, though those were rarer (the protests not the deaths.)

To me the absolutely worst fridging of all was White Tiger's ENTIRE FAMILY (and supporting cast in his own series.) Well his niece survived and became the new White Tiger decades later, but still. And he couldn't even avenge them himself, Spider-Man had to do it for him. WTF, Marvel!?

KingZeal Since: Oct, 2009
#40: Feb 18th 2012 at 8:53:50 AM

Right, but De Cheese was stating that it was unbelievable that writers couldn't figure out what to do with Gwen beyond marriage and break-up. At the time, "Fridging" was unheard of.

Sijo from Puerto Rico Since: Jan, 2001
#41: Feb 18th 2012 at 5:53:53 PM

And I agree with him (her?) Fridging is a bad thing because there's many, many other ways to deal with a supporting cast member you don't want to write than just killing her/him.

(As for Gwen, while I don't know it for a fact, I would not bet money that she was the first female comics character to be "fridged" not with 40 years of comic book history before that.)

edited 18th Feb '12 5:54:25 PM by Sijo

RavenWilder Since: Apr, 2009
#42: Feb 18th 2012 at 6:05:53 PM

Let me ask, how do you feel about Death by Origin Story, where the character was only introduced in the first place so they could be Stuffed into the Fridge shortly afterwards?

KingZeal Since: Oct, 2009
#43: Feb 18th 2012 at 6:08:33 PM

That pretty much describes the Trope Namer: Alex De Wytt.

Sijo from Puerto Rico Since: Jan, 2001
#44: Feb 19th 2012 at 5:01:32 AM

[up][up]It depends. If its readily apparent that the character will soon die (hinted by dialogue and such) I guess its fair. But if it isn't apparent, it can be annoying, even frustrating if you were starting to like him/her.

A big example of this was when DC comics reintroduced Isis -a female heroine who once even had her own live Action TV series- to their universe in Fifty Two, just for the specific purpose of killing her to make Black Adam miserable and go into a world-wide rampage. (Isis' brother, also introduced in this series, was also always meant to die for the same reason, making you wonder why TWO character deaths were needed. Heck, given that Adam is such a Killer Anti-Hero, he might not even have needed the death of any close companion to be set off, a minion or a citizen of his country might have been enough.) I hated the whole thing.

edited 19th Feb '12 5:07:46 AM by Sijo

NapoleonDeCheese Since: Oct, 2010
#46: Feb 19th 2012 at 10:25:36 AM

Death by Origin Story is a necessary thing- Most superhero origins rely on some tragedy element to get the characters moving. Krypton's explosion, the Waynes' shooting, Uncle Ben's murder- Without them, simply there isn't a Superman, Batman or Spider-Man. It isn't the same thing as pointlessly killing a character after years of having a followship.

The tricky part is at which part a death stops being gratuitous and becomes relevant and justified. There are a lot of cases, especially recently, where the deaths are obviously shallow and decided on a whim (I still think several writers just want to leave their mark as "THE MAN WHO KILLED (INSERT NAME HERE)!"), but in other cases it's much harder to decide. Kraven's death was a great, powerful story and the best it has ever been written with the character, but you could easily argue they could have come up with great ideas for him without needing to kill him off.

VampireBuddha Calendar enthusiast from Ireland (Wise, aged troper) Relationship Status: Complex: I'm real, they are imaginary
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#47: Feb 20th 2012 at 7:53:13 AM

^ Counterpoints:

  • Steve Rogers signed up to be Captain America because he thought that fighting Nazis was the right thing to do.
  • Wonder Woman stayed in Man's World for basically the same reason.
  • Alan Scott found a magic lantern and thought "I shall fight crime with this!"
  • If Johnny Alpha's mother did die, but that's just a footnote in his origin story; he ended up a bounty hunter due to the cruel and evil actions of his father (who did not die).
  • Katarina Dante could easily have been killed off for drama, but instead she persisted as a badass pirate queen, and Robbie Morrison instead explored just how horrible and how much of a big deal rape really is.

Huh. All the ones I would think of are either Golden Age or British. I wonder if there's something to that.

edited 20th Feb '12 7:54:11 AM by VampireBuddha

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Sijo from Puerto Rico Since: Jan, 2001
NapoleonDeCheese Since: Oct, 2010
#49: Feb 20th 2012 at 8:00:02 AM

[up][up] Well, in Cap's case, most modern interpretations seem to treat his whole WWII story as one big origin story, ending with the tragedy element (the death of Bucky, and then Cap being fully cut from the world he knew).

[up] How not which part of my post?

edited 20th Feb '12 8:00:34 AM by NapoleonDeCheese

C0mraid from Here and there Since: Aug, 2010
#50: Feb 20th 2012 at 8:11:36 AM

[up][up][up] So are you arguing that supporting characters should never get killed off?

edited 20th Feb '12 8:13:08 AM by C0mraid

Am I a good man or a bad man?

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