8. Kyle Rayner Saw The Start Of The Women In Refrigerators Trope
Fridging is so ingrained into the general lexicon at this point that theres probably a lot of people using it who dont know where it comes from. The term refers to the unfortunate practise of a lot of genre fiction - but comic books especially - of killing off female characters, usually to give some vengeance-based motivation to the male lead. Its actually a shortened version of Women In Refrigerators, the name of a website started by current comics writer Gail Simone back when she was just a funnybook-reading fan. The site sought to collate all the unfortunate fates met by love interests, female friends, and sidekicks at the hands of misogynistic creators. And the name itself came from an issue of Green Lantern. To up the stakes for the mostly fancy-free third GL Kyle Rayner, he came home one issue to find that his girlfriend Alexandra DeWitt had been murdered by a supervillain, dismembered, and stuffed into a refrigerator. Unnecessarily gory and gross, it kick-started a whole trend of comics criticism.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
