“Bitch Planet” #1 is going to make a lot of people angry. Good.
WRITTEN BY: Kelly Sue DeConnick
ART BY: Valentine De Landro
PUBLISHER: Image Comics
PRICE: $3.50
RELEASE: December 10, 2014
We’ve been told that “Bitch Planet” is Margaret Atwood meets Inglourious Basterds. They’re not wrong. But I’ll add to that: Orange is the New Black, “Le Deuxième Sexe,” Chicago, a little bit of Mad Men, and a hint of Grindhouse: Death Proof. It’s the start of a revolution jam packed into a comic book. It’s females being female in the smartest, toughest, sexiest, roughest, natural, raw, powerful, and honest way possible. It’s the true meaning of feminism. Not the misunderstood one that is blasted across the world.
In “Bitch Planet,” non-compliant women are shipped off to another planet that serves as a sort of prison. This prison has a holographic matriarch that is projected as all types of personalities…a leader, a warden, a “loving” catholic priestess… basically whatever she needs to be projected as in the moment to take care of business. The real story begins when a husband of one of the women shipped off to Bitch Planet comes into their earth headquarters pleading, saying his wife doesn’t belong there. They had a misunderstanding, that’s all. She’s not non-compliant. He had an affair and she acted out a little. Made some threats. But they resolved the issue, everything’s fine…he pleads. The setup of this conversation is downright genius as it switches panel to panel between his wife telling her story and him telling his story. Unfortunately it doesn’t end well for her but I’m not giving anything away because what ends up happening is the greatest mind fuck I’ve seen in awhile.
The way this future is set up is fascinating. A woman can be sent to prison for being non-compliant…and non-compliance encompasses being angry that your husband had an affair. Who knows what else it encompasses—a detail I can’t wait to find out more about. Yes, some of the women on Bitch Planet are criminals, so it should be insanely interesting to see how this plays out. But the patriarchy and the vast importance it plays in this speculative society are both captivating and terrifying. DeConnick crafts the hell out of this bleak future—a future that rewards men for their treachery and takes everything away from women for what exactly? We don’t know yet. But we know a few of them are as minor as gluttony and pride. What “Bitch Planet” is really asking us is, “What does it mean for a woman to be non compliant? And does this definition oppress her?”
Now of course this is an exaggerated world. It’s exploitation at its finest. But that’s the nature of speculative fiction. Even science fiction. This comic, at its heart, is social science fiction—a look at what could come about if we don’t make some changes in both gender and race relations. Like I said, it’s going to piss some people off and that just means it’s doing its job well. Add this to your pull list. It’s important, if not a little rough around the edges, but a staggering read.