10 Major Milestones In Comic Book History

3. Women In Refrigerators Is Founded

When Ron Marz axed off Alexandra DeWitt and stuffed her into a fridge, little could he have known that it would spawn a massive online movement regarding the treatment of women in comics. Said movement took the form of the website 'Women in Refrigerators', which was founded by Gail Simone and others to collate and document the number of women killed off/maimed/tortured/de-powered in the medium and dissect what the implications of the trend actually meant.

Simone received numerous responses from writers in the industry, including Marz, and many themselves admitted that it had given them pause for thought in regards to their own plotting techniques in respect to women. Simone would later (awesomely) go on to write comic books full time, kicking things off with a stint on Deadpool before going on to write acclaimed stints on Birds of Prey and Secret Six. Today, the phrase is commonly used in online circles, and other movements like The Hawkeye Initiative have also targeted the industry's often bizarre attitude towards women in comics.

While the medium is still relatively light on women-led books, there are far more women working in the industry than there were in 1994. Simone and the others behind WIR played a massive role in forcing a conversation on the issue, and though it may not be cited at such, the site had a massive role to play in the development of the medium as we currently see it.