Why Are We Still Fridging Female Characters?

“I belong in the refrigerator. Because the truth is, I’m just food for a superhero. He’ll eat up my death and get the energy he needs to become a legend.” This passage arrives at a pivotal point of The Refrigerator Monologues, a 2017 novel from Catherynne Valente that remains one of my favorite reverential and critical takes on the world of superhero comics. Structured in the style of The Vagina Monologues, the book gives voice to six fictional women who died in superhero-related drama, bearing countless similarities to female characters who have died (Marvel’s Gwen Stacy and Karen Page) or been otherwise mistreated (Marvel’s Jean Grey, DC’s Harley Quinn and Mera) in the heyday of superhero comics. In the years since the debut of The Refrigerator Monologues, it has felt like a necessary time capsule — a showcase of how certain heroines have (but hopefully wouldn’t continue to be) treated in superhero comics.

Unfortunately, the debut of this week’s Amazing Spider-Man #26 — and with it, the death of Kamala Khan / Ms. Marvel — threw that hope out the window like a misplaced web shooter. Kamala’s death by stabbing at the hands of the angry multiversal new villain The Scribble Man was so shocking that it couldn’t even be kept secret until publication day, with leaks and later official confirmation from Marvel that the storyline was on the horizon. Even with several weeks to pre-grieve Kamala’s inevitable demise, the end result only feels more baffling and infuriating. It’s not just that Kamala Khan was killed off. It’s not just that Kamala Khan was killed off in another character’s book that, according to fan-made calculations, she appeared in less than 5% of. It’s the fact Kamala Khan was fridged.

While death, and the impact it could have on superheroes, reverberated around comics for decades, the concept of “fridging” only began to crystalize in the 1990s. Coined by Gail Simone, who would go on to write landmark runs of Birds of Prey and Red Sonja, the term was simply defined as having a female character be “killed, maimed, or depowered” in order to progress the narrative of her male counterparts. Superhero comics of the late 80s and 90s had already been finding new and horrifying ways to treat their female characters, but the term got its name from 1994’s Green Lantern #54, when Alexandra DeWitt was killed and stuffed in a literal refrigerator as part of a supervillain’s torment towards her boyfriend, Kyle Rayner / Green Lantern. As the term, and Simone’s list of heroines who had been mistreated, became more widespread, it caused fans to reevaluate previous fictional deaths — including the infamous “The Night Gwen Stacy Died” in 1973’s Amazing Spider-Man.

That ordeal, which saw Gwen Stacy’s neck snapped in an altercation between Spider-Man and Green Goblin, was an emotional and narrative gut-punch, and sparked a still-collapsing domino effect on superhero stories. (An argument can be made that we might not have Spider-Gwen in all of her spunky household-name glory today if she didn’t exist partially as a reclamation of the original Gwen’s death.) When Amazing Spider-Man #26 proclaimed itself to be “the most shocking” issue of the book since “The Night Gwen Stacy Died”, it could’ve either been seen as comics’ latest half-hearted bit of hype, or an earnest indication that some big changes were about to come for the larger Marvel universe. Sure, Kamala will be properly mourned by that larger Marvel universe in the upcoming Fallen Friend one-shot. And sure, there’s already been speculation that Kamala’s death won’t even stick for long anyway, and that she’ll end up resurrected either as a mutant, with powers closer to her MCU counterpart, or some combination of the two. While that possibility opens up a whole other can of worms worthy of being discussed at a later date, the fact that Marvel might reach that destination by killing Kamala off in this particular way is what really stings.

First, there’s the optics — Kamala has easily become the most prominent Muslim superhero and one of Marvel’s premier female heroes in the less than a decade since her debut, only to be killed in a book led by one of her white male counterparts. (In the eyes of some, Kamala has been a modern-day successor to the youthful and inspirational exuberance Peter had when he first debuted, which adds a whole other nihilistic layer to the tragedy.) But there’s also the fridging component, and how it feels almost implausible within the specific parameters of Amazing Spider-Man. Unlike Gwen’s aforementioned death, or a number of other losses Peter has endured since becoming a superhero, it’s not easy to see how he will be profoundly impacted by Kamala’s passing. As many have lamented since the death was announced, Kamala had a much closer relationship with Miles Morales / Spider-Man, and prior to her occasionally popping up in the book as an Oscorp intern, she and Peter have largely interacted in group settings, or in a body-swapping miniseries that they don’t remember the events of. That’s not to say that Peter can’t be genuinely touched by Kamala’s sacrifice in future issues, but starting with his reaction is an odd and borderline-offensive lens through which to frame her death. It’s fridging, but a shallow copy of it — and it now (even if it gets reversed and retconned into oblivion) forever ties the worst part of Kamala’s trailblazing history to Spider-Man.

Kamala Khan is far from the first superheroine to get fridged — and unfortunately, the hollow brazenness of Amazing Spider-Man #26 could prove that she might not be the last. Even as future issues of the book continue to sell well (which feels inevitable, given the title’s longstanding popularity), and even if Kamala’s return does end up being right around the corner, it’s going to take a while to wash the taste of all of this out of our mouths. The current tapestry of modern superhero comics has room for all kinds of stakes — if a story wants to (in Valente’s words) “get the energy [it] needs to become a legend,” fridging doesn’t have to be the way to do it.