Hi. This is a list I made when it occurred to me that it's not that healthy to be a female character in comics. I'm curious to find out if this list seems somewhat disproportionate, and if so, what it means, really. These are superheroines who have been either depowered, raped, or cut up and stuck in the refrigerator. I know I missed a bunch. Some have been revived, even improved -- although the question remains as to why they were thrown in the wood chipper in the first place. I know I missed a bunch -- I just don't know my comics deaths the way I should. I'm not editorializing -- I'm just curious to find out what you guys think it means, if anything.

The preceding letter was written and sent by me when I realized one day that most of my favorite female comics characters had met untimely and often icky ends. The history of the idea and this site are listed here, and the responses from various comics professionals are listed here. An important point: This isn't about assessing blame about an individual story or the treatment of an individual character and it's certainly not about personal attacks on the creators who kindly shared their thoughts on this phenomenon. It's about the trend, its meaning and relevance, if any. Plus, it's just fun to talk about refrigerators with dead people in them. I don't know why. We'd love to hear what you think on this subject, or women in comics in general. Thanks for visiting!

-- Gail Simone, March 1999

LONG-AWAITED UPDATE!

Sorry it's taken this long to update this page. Various other things have prevented keeping it fresh as I would have liked. However, that doesn't mean the e-mail stopped in the meantime! It seems more people are interested in the page than ever. Welcome to those of you coming here from the Dallas Observer article or the mention in Wizard, by the way. For those of you who have been here before, there are some new things scattered throughout these pages, including new pro respondents, and fan email. More should be up soon.

Also, the list as included here needs some revision, since some of these characters have seemingly changed status since last year. Maybe people are listening?

Thanks for checking it out!

Gail Simone

PS: People have been asking about those of us who have worked on the site.

I'm currently writing a humor (!) column on comics called You'll All Be Sorry! At Jonah Weiland's Comic Book Resources. I've also made a weird leap into professional comics writing, working for Bongo Comics on various Simpsons books, starting with issue #50.

Beau Yarbrough, who designed this site, writes possibly the most trusted news column on comics on the net; COMIC WIRE, at Jonah Weiland's Comic Book Resources. He also has a site of his own, Secret Identity.

Rob Harris, who did the lion's share of the site maintenance, works on a cool new site, www.Superpowers.org, along with John Norris, who has helped gather respondents and done some updates. I have a guest editorial there this month. This site is the brainchild of Jason Yu, who has kindly arranged for our page to be hosted at his site.

Also noteworthy is the brilliant Daniel Merlin Goodbrey, a gifted artist who did our "covers" (check the "reactions" page). He has his own site, E-merl.com, and is working on an award-nominated web comic, RUST.