Women in Refrigerators Women in Refrigerators


JERRY ORDWAY responds

Mr. Ordway might have too many fine works to his credit to actually list, but he's done notable art and/or scripting for "The Crisis On Infinite Earths," "Superman," "Power of Shazam" and others. He's also a gifted painter. Man, I hate people with talent. :) (GS)

What can I offer to this? I have a six year old daughter, and find a lot of the female characterizations to be unsuitable for her to read.  That doesn't mean all comics need to be geared towards little kids, but the stories you listed were generally from standard newsstand comics, and a lot of them came out in the 80's. Male writers in comics often wrote these stories totally from the male perspective, which is one problem. Recently, when Peter David wrote a Mary Marvel-Supergirl special, I was a bit disappointed with the storyline, which involved Mary almost being molested by a cop (I think). I do think stories like these can be told, but why fall into this cliche? It's like movies of the seventies, where the lead females were either raped, or the act was attempted, to set up some revenge thing. It's been overused. Female characters need to have more dimensions, and the stories need to reflect their own interests. My daughter likes Batgirl, in the Batman Adventures mags, and hungers for good girl superheroes to read about!

Best, Jerry O