Writer~Kelly Sue DeConnick
Valentine De Landro ~ Art
Bitch Planet is here, y’all and I’m about that life. In fact a lot of us here at BNP are and it’s a comic that we’ve been anticipating for a hot minute.
Our Fave Kelly Sue? [icon_check]
A Badass Woman Making comics about badass women? [icon_check]
POC present and accounted for aka We-Got-That-Call-About-Diversity? [icon_check]
A book from the ever exciting Image Comics lineup? [icon_check]
A POC artist? We see you Valentine. [icon_check]
What looks like a new comic book with a unique story that will touch upon several social issues including the industrialization of the prison system and how society treats womenfolk? [icon_check]
There is nothing cute here, there is nothing pristine. What’s here is a story presented without a whole lot of frills or ruffles. It’s raw. It’s bloody. It’s a beating. It’s in your face and it isn’t going anywhere. Criminals. Deviants. Weaker links. Those cast out. The worse society has to offer: women who fall into this category are ejected from Planet Earth to a new place–a prison planet.
Cue the music and we’re here. The prisoners are moved along like mindless cattle and the guards wear helmets that eerily mask their facial features making them look less human and more like walking issuers of pain. Another unsettling feature of this place? The pink toned hologram forms of women who serve as guides with their faces all made up to perfection and their curves hugging their skin tight outfits…or lack of outfits by way of corsets and such. There are women cowering. There are women crying. There are women walking along not ashamed of their bodies. There are women taking broad steps and not looking down at the ground. But what do they all have in common?
Every woman here has made some great error: every woman here in this prison, on this planet has served the world non compliance and found herself here. Every woman present has committed some action worthy of upsetting the powers that be in society. In issue one we’re introduced to some of the new arrivals: the unapologetic Penny, the timid Marian and the-silent-until-I’m-about-to-whoop-you-ass Kamau. We’re also introduced to the harsh treatment of the inmates: we’re given a glimpse into what will only serve as a taste of abuse to come.
As comics are constantly being evaluated and critiqued as a legitimate art form in this day and age, let’s be proud. Let’s be honored. Let’s be jovial that this book is helping to lead a movement–an uprising, a surge of all these voices of different women and the need for more.
To see more of us represented, to see more critical thought to issues that women are facing in the nerd spectrum and out within the confines of the real world and most definitely to see women being creatures that are bold and aiming to stand against what we are told we should be and be what we want to be.
Bitch Planet: this is surely a comic you need to be reading and a movement you need to jump on. Be Not Compliant.
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