These women are:
- Paige Embry, a young intern in a science lab who accidentally turned her boyfriend into the superhero Kid Mercury, and who was murdered by his enemy when she tried to help him in battle.
- Julia Ash, an incredibly powerful young woman who was possessed by an extraterrestrial entity and developed amazing powers, and was brought down by her own friends who were afraid of her.
- Pauline Ketch, a rich girl who fell in love with a psychopath and was murdered by him.
- Blue Bayou, the rebellious princess of Atlantis who became queen after her mother's death, and still grieves her son who was murdered in a battle between her husband and his nemesis when he was a baby.
- Daisy Green, an aspiring actress who fell in love with a superhero and was targeted by his nemesis, after which she left him and fell on hard times, eventually dying of a drug overdose.
- Samantha Dane, a photographer who was murdered by her superhero boyfriend's friend after he was blackmailed and killed.
A singular Take That! to much of the comic book writers and the trope of the fridged woman.
Tropes present in this novel:
- Alliterative Name:
- Blue Bayou.
- Tom Thatcher.
- Author Tract: Women in comic books are not treated well, at all.
- Big Eater: Pauline Ketch is this, which confuses everyone else since they don't get hungry in Dead Town.
- Cast of Expies: The girls are this for six well known women from comics, and all the minor characters are based on other superhero characters:
- Paige Embry is one for Gwen Stacy, Spider-Man's first love who was murdered by his nemesis the Green Goblin.
- Julia Ash is one for Jean Grey.
- Pauline Ketch is one for Harley Quinn, particularly as depicted in mainstream DC comics Batman canon.
- Blue Bayou is one for Mera, Queen of Atlantis.
- Daisy Green is one for Karen Page, Daredevil's girlfriend who was murdered by his nemesis Bullseye after becoming a notorious poster girl for Madonna-Whore Complex.
- Samantha Dane is one for Alexandra DeWitt, Green Lantern's girlfriend and the original fridged woman.
- Tom Thatcher AKA Kid Mercury is one for Spider-Man and the Flash.
- Saint Ovidius and the Millennium Men are ones for Charles Xavier's Academy and the X-men. Professor Yes is one for Charles Xavier.
- City of the Damned: Dead Town is an awful miserable afterlife where the women of superheroes' lives are condemned to live for all eternity (or until they're resurrected).
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Lucas control over reality allows him to continue manipulating Julia Ash even after her death, terrifying her with her many resurrections.
- Excessive Mourning: What Blue Bayou is accused of. She points out however that her husband barely grieved for the death of their son, and next to that everything would appear excessive.
- A Fate Worse Than Death:
- All of the women are stuck in a Purgatory like existence where they can never move on but must live forever mourning their lost lives and brooding over past lives.
- What happened to Julia: She is caught in a continuous retcon of her own life and identity, and she's only got fourteen minutes every week where she can actually truly remember who she is and what happened to her.
- Disposable Woman: Essentially the thesis of the book. All of the women are just side characters in the lives of heroes and their horrifying fates only matter so much as they affect the men in their lives.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Paige Embry bitterly resents the fact that Tom Thatcher has since moved on and married another woman.
- Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Daisy is a very nice woman, who turns to prostitution when she falls onto hard times.
- The Junkie: Daisy becomes addicted to drugs after her relationship with her boyfriend, whose superpowers include sweat that works like drugs, and eventually dies of an overdose.
- Mundane Afterlife: Dead Town is basically a Wretched Hive of depressing buildings, bad food, regret and misery straight out of CS Lewis.
- Rebellious Princess: Blue Bayou was in an anarchistic rock band and liked to drink and get high.
- Retcon: What happens to Julia at every given time, and also the name of the enemy who trapped her. This makes the story secondarily a parody of superhero comics characters whose backstories have been allowed to become so convoluted and characterization so inconsistent that they no longer make any sense at all- something which some fans view Jean Grey as an example of.
- Stuffed into the Fridge: The title itself comes from this very trope and deconstructs the roles that female characters have to play, for better or worse.
- Take That!: The whole book is one for the entire comic book industry.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Hinted at with Paige and Daisy. Paige says that maybe things would have worked out better if she'd been the kind of girl who stayed at home and waited for her boyfriend. Daisy later says that she did that, and it wasn't any better than Paige's experience.
- Unstable Powered Woman: Julia Ash's story parodies Jean Grey's, pointing out how frequently this seems to happen to female superhero characters.
- Woman Scorned: The club cites this but don't pursue any sort of revenge (even if they could). It is part of their curse that they still love who they left behind in life.
- Wretched Hive: Dead Town isn't a Fire and Brimstone Hell but it is arguably worse.
