Not unfair but not entirely relevant, at least to the woman in a refrigerator point, which this year has become something of a sore point (and I've only just started reading comics). It's just that I don't think you can read these things entirely in a vacuum.

I'm sure that when Green Lantern found his girlfriend, or the carved up pieces of her, in his refrigerator fans of that book would have felt more invested in his character development than her death and they would have had a point. It's when you begin to realise that her fate is not the tragic exception but the overwhelming rule for female or minority characters in comics (and other media).

I'm actually quite the faint-hearted feminist when it come to reacting against these things, the only one I'm really prepared to go against the barricades for is the full Green Lantern where the woman is brutally killed to spur the hero into vengeance (and make a man of him). With the extremely nasty subtext that the woman's degrading death was actually a good and even necessary thing. I was very, very glad Xander didn't get to go Charles Bronson on Toru the way some fans seemed to hope. We did also get a longer scene of his reaction to her death with the scattering of her ashes so overall I found the story very satisfying but I have a weakness for emotional restraint. Maybe it's a British thing. More tea?