Not Going Out, Not Staying In: Leading Lady Cyrodome

70 years apart: Wonder Woman and Gigi Gutierrez frozen.

(Note: I first wrote about Cryodome in 2012, and it’s still my most popular post on Pretty Vacant Thoughts. On its two year anniversary, I present methods to expand it.)

In genre fiction with two pretty female characters, one is to be subjected to some villainous procedure that leaves her in a beautifully preserved state (dead or inert), while the leading lady barely escapes the same fate with her life. My internet friend Dr Fautus first coined it as “a fate prettier than death.” I call this genre literary device Cryodome.

If the leading lady were to undergo the cryodome process herself the story usually ends, with the villains victorious and/or the leading man saddened but moving on. However, there is an alternative, and it can be found in comics!

Leading ladies Diana (Wonder Woman #13, 1945) and Gigi Gutierrez (Pretty Vacant: Final Repose Part 2, 2012) underwent the same Cyrodome process nearly 70 years apart: frozen and left on display for their villainous counterparts to admire. Fortunately, their stories did not have to end with the two being permanently petrified.

Diana took direct approach, breaking out of her iced confinement after regaining awareness after her freezing. Gigi’s liberation was more problematic, requiring a little help from her friends…

Yet releasing oneself through your own efforts or with assistance from allies are not the only two ways a leading lady can circumvent Cryodome’s effects. Legendary comic artist John Byrne provides another option:

Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch, undergoes a transformative procedure in an unaware state (Avengers West Coast #48, 1989). Where this differs from Diana and Gigi is that the villains use the process to turn Wanda into one of their own, a storyline that plays out over the next year. Turning a leading lady “bad” is a Byrne (and Marvel Comics) stock-in-trade, having done it before with Phoenix and the Invisible Girl.

Comics are an ideal go-between with visual (movies, tv) and conceptual (books). With comic book’s hold over pop culture today (the Avengers movie and tv’s Arrow anyone?), perhaps it is appropriate that comics to fully utilize techniques not often found in other media. Comics can utilize or subvert the Cryodome process, showing its flexibility once again!

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