Amazing Spider-Man #655

[cyberghostface]

Color me surprised, as this is the second time in a row that a BND issue was pretty good. I guess my final opinion hinges on how the next issue turns out, but overall, I thought this was a very solid effort in terms of writing and art and definitely one of the better issues of the BND era by far.

Anyway, the issue deals with the aftermath of the fridging of Jonah's wife, Marla. The bulk of it is a dream sequence in which Peter is reminded of all the people who knows who has died during his tenure as Spider-Man. I was actually impressed with the actual continuity here as we see a lot of dead characters from years ago...for example, Nathan Lubensky, Aunt May's former lover is there as well as Charlie, the girl Spidey accidentally killed during the Spider-Man vs Wolverine one-shot. I'd like to post some of these pages, but there's no way I could post just four and get the effect across to you. There's some interesting presentation here, with one two-page spread looking like something out of a M. C. Escher painting.

Basically, it brings up how Spidey doesn't kill people, with his villains chastising him and blaming their victims' deaths on him for not having the courage to kill them.

At the end, Spidey runs into the burglar that killed Uncle Ben. Spider-Man decides to take matters into his own hands, and beats the burglar into a bloody pulp, when...







The issue ends, however, with a hostage situation in which a new villain kills one of his hostages before the police even have time to negotiate. He says that he has he has no regard for human life, and if they don't do everything he says, they're going to have a massacre on their hands (he puts emphasis on the word 'massacre', so I'm guessing that's his name).

So basically, and what's gotten the internet riled up, is that a lot of people are saying that this issue is leading up to Spidey breaking his "no-kill rule" and that he is going to kill this guy next issue. I personally don't think it'll get that far, but if it did, what would you think?

Comments

[recognitions]

For one thing, I'm pretty sure fridging refers largely to female characters.

[shadowpsykie]

yes in the beging, but it has since been expanded to any character (usually a hero OR an aquantance of a hero) that is brought down or killed in order to make another hero look good.

i beleive TVTropes states that: A character is killed off in a particularly gruesome manner and left to be found just to offend or insult someone. The usual victims are those who matter to the hero, specifically best buddies, love interests, and Sidekicks.

its not excllusive to females but it did start that way.

granted it happens alot more (or at least seems like it does) but it happens to others as well. the point of it is to (A) make the hero look better (B) motivate the hero to action

[greenmask]

If it's evolved to cover ANY character, it shouldn't have. The 'dead minority' is a necessary part of fridging, because it's what makes it a thing instead of just part of a plot. Fridging is always a metatextual matter, or it's just character death.

[shadowpsykie]

i don;t think it should be limited to "Dead Minority" though i get where you are coming from.

its whenever a character is killed (as it says above) in a particularly greusome manner JUST so the Hero has motivation to act.

thats not the same thing as just character death.

character death happens. i can accept that. but when a character is killed as a throw away or used as merely a device, and then never again referenced unless it is to "shock" the hero (ie, not dealing with the grief process), then i call foul. regardless or race, gender, or orientation.

As a minority myself i don't think minorities should be a "sacred cow" if you are going to kill a character, any character, make the death count for something. otherwise i concider it a cheap, fridging death

[greenmask]

Gruesome gratuitously torturous deaths have become so common that alone, they're not 'an issue' any more.

I'm not saying "minorities should be sacred", but killing off a member of an under-represented character pool is always going to mean more, in a 'real life matters' sort of way. If it's torturous, even more so. It needs to be discussed and having a term to use in that discussion is extremely useful. Even if it's a well-written death, a non-throwaway one, it still needs to be discussed and patterns need to be watched for.

[shadowpsykie]

me i can respect a well written death, the death of supergirl in the first crisis, that made me cry, it made me want to be supergirl (though at that young age i was still wise enough not to tell my my father that little fact... me being... not a girl and all)

i guess my real problem with the issue itself is that i think that some terms have been over used. any female death or minority death is being called afridging (or the race card is played) yes, some times this actually is the case, and yes these situations have to watched out for, but it's the hair trigger reactions that urk me. (i admit, i had a hair trigger reaction to Freedom Ring's death, but that really just turned out to be a REALLY unfortune set of circumstances that even the writer admits was stupid)

yes i know i kinda steared away a bit from the topic we were discussing. so let me get back to that: I agree, the death of a minority character should be closely scrutinized (regardless of how the death was handled) but we should be careful before we criticize it, you get what i am saying?

That said, i think ANY death should be scrutinized, (was this death necissary, how is the aftermath treated, was it a throw away death, did the death have meaning beyond the emidiate action?)

If the death of a minority character happens, the death should be all the more scrutinized.

i guess this is just my long way of saying, i think a fridging can happen to anyone regardless of minority status, because the essence of a fridging is the death of a character close to (more likely cherished) by the main character, for the sole reason of furthering the main character's story, then more often than not forgoten almost immediately after or only used there after for shock value. in other words, the throw away death of a supporting character.

you don't have to agree. this is just my opinion. i still beleive that deaths of minority characters (or in the case of GL Terry) the mistreament of minority characters has to be more closely looked at because of the natural inclination of people to use them as disposable characters, but other characters can fall victim to this type of writing..

(wow i did not expect this to be this long)

[greenmask]

It IS used a lot. I don't think that the solution to a word being overused is to stop using it correctly/reasonably, though! Like, "Mary Sue" - often used in ways people will argue over, but there ARE examples which (almost) nobody would dispute of Mary Sues. Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way, for example. And to describe and discuss characters like that "Mary Sue" is REALLY useful. It's interesting to debate Sueishness about less starkly written characters, too. But you can only do that because "Mary Sue" is still a thing, even after being used soooooo much.

Hair triggers are something that annoy a fair number of people, but it's important to remember that that doesn't invalidate the complaints of the people who have them.

[shadowpsykie]

oh i didn't mean to say that it invalidates them. not at all, everyone is entitled to thier gripes. And even the most hair triggery things can still have a kernel(grmr ck?) of validity.

let me put it this way: when a minority character is killed/tortured/maimed this needs to be closely examined because there is a very high possibility that this is a fridging and SHOULD be classified as thus if it is.

However: if a NON minority character is killed/tortured/maimed, taht does not necissarily mean it NOT a fridging either. Non Minority characters can be fridged as well.

i think the main issue is that Fridging itself has a number of variables to it. does it have to do with the death of a female character? Does it have to do with the death of a minority character? does the death have meaning? Does the death serve the story or does it merely a device to propel the hero? Does the death of the character involve Agency (on the part of the deceased) or was there a lack of Agency (since i learned what this means i have found my self using this alot)

because there are so many variables it becomes hard to point out what exactly a Fridging is.

there are things to watch out for, and the death of a minority character is DEFINATELY one of the things to look out for. However (a) that is not the only requirement (b) not every minority death is a fridging

and vice versa, just because a character is a non minority does not mean the death is NOT a fridging.

you get what i am trying to say?

[greenmask]

I see what you're saying, I'm just not sure that I agree that "fridging" is the word to use for non-minority characters. The original Green Lantern fridging was so enraging because it had this real-world edge to it - hate crimes are committed against minorities, crimes are committed against the privileged.

[shadowpsykie]

ok. i can see where you are coming from. But wouldn't some one beating up a man for the sole reason that he was provilaged be conscidered a hate crime?

wikipedia states: "Hate crimes (also known as bias-motivated crimes) occur when a perpetrator targets a victim because of his or her perceived membership in a certain social group, usually defined by racial group, religion, sexual orientation, disability, class, ethnicity, nationality, age, gender, gender identity, social status or political affiliation.[1]

"Hate crime" generally refers to criminal acts that are seen to have been motivated by bias against one or more of the types above, or of their derivatives. Incidents may involve physical assault, damage to property, bullying, harassment, verbal abuse or insults, or offensive graffiti or letters (hate mail)"


a hate crime is any crime which is motived by one's social position a person who attacks some one because he is privilaged is still committing a hate crime. its not the crime itself, its the motivation of the crime.

In my area there have been hate speech painted on the walls of churches and parking lots saying amongst other things, defaming speech about christians, jews, blacks, latinos and whites. all of these are concidered hate crimes. despite the fact that it included whites and christians (neither of which are minorities)

i guess thats the key. the motivation of the actions in both these situatios. Hate Crimes and Fridging.

i'm not trying to take away from minorities (hell im a double minority myself, possibly a tripple minority depending how you look at it) i just think that even a non minority death could possibly be a fridging as well (unlikely but still possible)

[greenmask]

Are they actually considered hate crimes by law? I can see them feeling the same, in an area with a very diverse population, and I can see that they may be 'motivated by hate', but I'm fairly sure-ish that hate crimes are considered in a national context, because laws about them say something about the context of a country as a whole rather than about a local area.

It's true that it's terrible for Johnny Storm to die, and that how he died was probably really awful for him personally, and that it's a terrible thing to happen to a character. But in the wider context of "deaths in super-hero comics", or "the use of minorities' mortality in fiction", his personal circumstances just don't rate in the same way.

Motivation isn't the only thing that makes a crime fuelled by hate a Hate Crime. Crime in general is pretty hateful, but we do need the extra clarification in some cases.

I'm not thinking that you're trying to rob anyone of anything, and I doubt anyone reading this thread would either!

[big_daddy_d]

Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way, for example

Gotta be honest. This confuses me.

[icon_uk]

Me too, but Google is a wonderful thing

Meet Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way

[greenmask]

It's actually a pretty delightful story to read, and I mean that in a "yaaay badfic" and also in an honest "oh my goodness, teenagers are SO CUTE" way.

[icon_uk]

My tolerance for such things is not high, so I think I'll just take your word for that.

[big_daddy_d]

That is..that is so fuckin horrible..I mean.. I actually just tried to read the actual story to see what the fuss is and...I could barely read a sentence..that is..wow.

[icon_uk]

I should apologise for a tvtropes link, but they have such fun tearing the concept apart that I couldn't deny anyone of the chance to enjoy it. I particularly like

"Punctuation Shaker: Assuming the apostrophe in her name is meant to be there and isn't a comma that died of despair in the previous line. "

[shadowpsykie]

also... ummm can you change your icon every now and then.... i don't know why, but this one always creeps me out... and i can't explain it, please don't scare Terra... :D

[greenmask]

This is the only non-mod icon I have!

[shadowpsykie]

he looks like he wants to do not nice things to me.... *hides undermydesk*

ps sorry my response to your post was so long, i didn;t intend it to be so long...

[greenmask]

It's fine! We're a discussion group, after all. :]

He's actually just reacting to having seen a number of people he was shooting a film with be horribly killed, I think it's supposed to be an "oh no!" face.

[shadowpsykie]

cool :)

where is it from?

[greenmask]

"Bloody Pit of Horror"

It's possibly better in the original language (it's dubbed), but.. I don't think it can be THAT much better. You can find it on Archive.org if you want.. but.. you really probably don't.

[shadowpsykie]

hmm interesting... is it a japanese/chinese film? or is it a french film?

[greenmask]

Italian! We thought it was going to be something really horrible and spooky, and it's just.. shit.