Fridging...

Ok- so at this point in time, I do NOT actually read comics… I go to a website to keep up with what’s happening in comics because I have a morbid curiosity.
The reason I feel a need, again, to vent about the comic book industry is what Dan Slott is doing on the Avengers. I want to mention that I loved his She Hulk… I thought Jen was Smart, Sassy and INTERESTING…Though that said- his explanation of Jen sleeping with Juggernaut was Continuity Porn.
I read this weekend a couple of pages of his Avengers (forgot if they were Mighty or New)- and he totally fridged Tigra… not that Tigra needed any MORE help being destroyed.

Tigra was created in the 70’s to appeal to ‘female audiences’… A lot of minority heroes were created in the 70’s to ‘balance’ comics. I was introduced to her in the 80’s when she joined the Avengers and was- at that point the only female member of the team. Like many of the female Avengers- she didn’t have as much name recognition as the guys (Right now I think Spider-Girl has had the longest running comic for a Marvel female) but she had guts and wanted to prove herself to the ‘big boys’… And was able to ‘defeat’ the Molecule Man by talking him down- AND not beating him up.
Because Byrne didn’t like Tigra- when he took over the West Coast Avengers, he ended up having Tigra go ‘into heat’ and turning her into a housecat for part of his run.

So like most female characters- she was marginalized and sexualized as the writers needed.
She also had an on again, off again relationship with Hank Pym… aka the wife beater.

So Tigra of course found out that she’s PREGNANT… because really what can writers do to female characters save for a) making them objects of desire, b) raping them and/or c) making them pregnant.
I say and/or because Tigra was knocked up NOT by Hank Pym BUT by a skrull pretending to be Pym- which is rape in my book.
Ah but it gets better… Because Tigra is a cat like critter, Slott made sure the reader understood that Tigra MIGHT have a litter of Skrull babies/kittens.

So after reading the scene- where the artist shows us Tigra’s nightmare of giving birth to a litter of skrull kittens… Somebody posts it to a livejournal… and the fans, correctly imho, call this a fridge story.
Slott comes onto the forums and defends it as “drama”… which I call B.S. on because how come we’ve never read a story where Tony gets sued for child support??! I mean if Tigra getting knocked up is drama, then wouldn’t Tony knocking a girl up after a drunken bender be EQUALLY dramatic.
The other reason I hate this story- is because a) I don’t see Marvel allowing Tigra to actually have an abortion( miscarriages in comics are ok- abortions, not so much) and b) no matter HOW GOOD Slott writes the pregnancy… eventually a crap writer is going to get ahold of Avengers… and we’ll then have to read cringe worthy stories of Tigra and her kittens…