Bitch Planet
Ratings76
Average rating4.1
4.5 stars “If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I ain't broke...and you bastards ain't never gonna break me.”
A really mixed bag. Some of these were bad - cheesy and unimaginative - whereas others were genuinely fantastic. Particularly cutting were the commentaries on police violence, one in which we see a young cop getting indoctrinated to use violence against unarmed people, and another in which a white woman who has donned blackface in an attempt to steal not only their culture but black people's very skin is shot by police.
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Are you too fat?
Too thin?
Too ugly?
Too slutty?
Too queer?
Are you non-compliant?
If you are, I have the place just for you! A place ordained by God and man. Your sins “are such that you are beyond correction or castigation.” This place, the Auxiliary Compliance Outpost, also known as BITCH PLANET, will excise you from this world... “lest your sickness spread.”
BITCH PLANET is the name of a genius satirical series written by Kelly Sue Deconnick. A wild and almost cinematic romp through a technicolor 1970's grindhouse dreamland all tightly packaged inside of a speculative science fiction world not so far outside of our own. Look deeper, there is so much more than meets the eye behind the lurid cover.
“I can't see you, But I feel you...judging me.”
Penelope Rolle – Bitch Planet
The story opens on a line of naked, ethnically diverse women walking in a line surrounded by faceless guards swinging billy clubs. There is a corseted holographic nun in the center of the room conversationally welcoming the newest non-compliers. “Welcome to the Auxiliary Compliance Outpost, intake facility two. Uniforms and supplies are issued at stalls to your left and right, divided by identification number.” We meet our heroine and main protagonist Kamau Kogo, a former athlete who within the first 8 pages of the book attempts and fails to save a fellow inmate from the guards, subsequently being framed for the murder herself. The way in which the AI speaks to Kamau is insidious:
“Marian Collins was 42 years old, Kam. She had a life you took from her.”
“She had a son, Kam.”
“Why did you kill her?”
The readers all know that Kam did not commit the murder, but instead, it was the prison guards. Kam screams, “You lie!” Of the bat, we know that Kam is a strong character. Instead, the prison blackmails Kam into creating an athletic team for a gladiatorial game called either Duemilla or Megaton.
Depending on whom you talk to. It is a no holds barred free for all with fluid rules. The girl's team, a hodgepodge of different offenders, comes together to basically be humiliated. All of this has a Deathrace feel. Populist bread and circuses entertainment for the masses. Under it all, we have political machinations, hints of intrigue, and the possibility of prison break.
This is the first volume of a ten-volume set, and the author lays out the protagonists and the plot beautifully setting us up for adventures to come. Plus, this Vol. has one of the most magnificent panels I have ever read involving one of the main characters Penny Rolle. I literally cheered. Kamau Kogo is an interesting character as well. She seems like a truly authentic person, one who excepts nothing from this broken circus-like system. To be affected by the system, aside from physically be housed in prison, is in a way, passively excepting it. She does none of that. The system is broken, and she knows it, as does Penny.
Non-compliance can be seen as an allegory for today's woman. Gay, straight, queer, trans, fat, thin, ugly or beautiful. We are all something that is non-compliant and the media and society at large hums quietly along telling us in a thousand ways how this is true. I empathize quite a bit with Penne Rolle. I am heavy and six feet tall. I tower over most other women, and I cannot tell you how many people have told me how much better my life would be if I lost the weight. I am non-compliant.
“Let the games begin.”
The artwork is that of a crazy 70's grindhouse film decked out in intense colors. “Intensity in Ten Cities” kind of colors. It works well in the story and is a nod to the great work of Taki Soma (Illustrator), Valentine De Landro (Artist), and Robert Wilson IV (Artist). This is a book of extremes, and the art is entirely apart of that.
My recommendation, buy the damn book. Buy artwork from this book, hell, get a tattoo of the bitch planet logo. Whatever we can do to support the awesome that is Kelly Sue DeConnick. I am a big fan, and I hope you will be too once you give it a whirl.
I had a hard time with all the characters and their names. The two that stood out to me the most were Kamau & Penny. I enjoyed Kamau and her willingness to protect those weaker than her. Penny was a character that I related to the most, she is sent to Bitch Planet for all types of charges, but one that was absurd was wanton obesity.
In this world, women who don't confirm are sent to Bitch Planet. Back talker? Disrespectful to your husband? Too loud? Too old? Auxiliary Compliance Outpost, aka ACO, aka Bitch Planet is where you go. I look forward to reading the remainder of the series, I hope for a happy ending though.
Artwork is top notch, although I do wish it was a bit more vibrant.
One note, semi spoiler. All of the guards wear this type of face mask that protects their face, thus making them look all the same. However, one can assume that they are all men. The female guard doesn't have a mask because she is trying to gain their trust. Is she truly a guard? Is a plant from the “Fathers”?
This was great! The fake ads at the end of each issue about treible products that some sadly existed in the past (tapeworms for weight loss) and could very well exist (pills to make women more compliant, sound like frontal lobotomies anyone?) mixed in with sadly true stats about domestic violence.
Women are held to ridiculous standards by the “Fathers” and anyone who doesn't reach these ideals of feminine beauty, behaviour or stereotype is shipped off to the prison planet Bitch.
Keen to see where this one goes.
What if two women took standard women-in-prison exploitation tropes and upended them to satirize all that is misogynistic in our culture? You wind up with something that makes you laugh, and cringe, and pause and say “that is so over the top,” only to realize that there's a real-life analog that is actually way too close to the exaggerated depiction for comfort. You get women kicking ass and refusing to comply. You get shower scenes that start just as one would expect from the exploitation movies, and end up in a very different place!
It's all I can do to stop myself from buying the next collection and finding out immediately what the deal is with President Bitch!
Intersectional feminism meets Black Mirror. Definitely looking forward to picking up the next volume.
So. I enjoyed the story overall. Right at the beginning you are plopped into this world with no clue how we got here — to a planet where “problem” women are sent for all sorts of sins, and these “problems” can be basically anything that doesn't 100% comply with the patriarchy. There's also some sort of Hunger Games-esque TV channel that shows propaganda for the patriarchy and shows all sorts of programming that the “Fathers” want the people to see, and one of the things they are considering showing is a sports game in which the “Bitch Planet” women are expected to compete, with alluded-to bad things that will likely happen to them as a result. (The first issue ends before getting there, though. I wish it had covered more ground, and included more back story.)
I enjoyed the artwork overall. It was very well-drawn, and I loved that it was representative of lots of types of bodies. My biggest issue was that there was quite a bit too much nudity for my taste. A LOOOOOT of female nudity, plus there was some unexpected male nudity in there too, and I was not altogether cool with the volume of it on either count. I am not a prude, but not all of it seemed entirely necessary.
But honestly, even though the individual components were enjoyable, I didn't really enjoy the reading experience as much as I'd hoped I would.
My favorite part was the Classified ads that ran between each issue of the story, which were funny and colorful and full of snarky feminist commentary.
Aahahaha. Like Margaret Atwood meets Orange Is the New Black. In your face femrage, clear sardonic wit (those fake ads!), gets you pumped. I didn't know anything about this before reading, so I guess I wasn't over-hyped - I was perfectly neutral. Puts the F-U back into fun.
We liked this very much. Penny is the shit. Kam is awesome. I can't wait to read more.
I liked it. The story is compelling, the characters are awesome, and the art is really good. Ending every issue with an essay on Feminism is a great bonus, especially when they're beautifully written (also the Q&As, which remind you of the importance and the rarity of such a book to exist), but I'm only going to review the comics part of this volume for now.
Even though I really enjoyed it, I felt like there's a major flaw in the setting of the story.
It seems like we're in a dystopian future, but it doesn't feel like it. Usually in a dystopia, the writer finds out a pattern in our society's evolution and exaggerates it in the future, putting a mirror in front of our eyes, to scare us from what's to come. However, here, we have a 1950's society but with a better technology for oppressing women this time. I'm not saying that misogyny is gone, but I'm sure we're not on our way to having women shipped out to another planet. Or at least, not anymore.
It's a pretty cool set up, but usually when a writer doesn't want to follow the natural evolution of a society, they would insert a major event that would destroy Earth as we know it, so they'd be able to introduce their own logic, and suggest whatever consequences they want. Everything in this comic is really accurate, yet farfetched at the same time, because the backstory was not established (a sort of Deus ex Machina slipped at the beginning of the story).
I wonder what happened in this parallel universe that made Planet Bitch justifiable and women so disposable.
The series is still at its beginning, so maybe they'll be clearing up some of the issues in the volumes to come. There's a lot of potential in here. I will keep checking in, the story is still gripping and the character development very interesting, and of course the extended backmatter is the crown jewel.
I read this as single issues, and I loved the essays included with the back matter that apparently aren't in the trades? Anyway, this definitely emotionally resonated with me, and I love seeing a comic series that's doing so much intersectional feminist work. But also, it's really not the kind of thing that I would have chosen to read if it hadn't been so universally acclaimed and I probably love it sliiightly less than everyone else seems to? Like I get that it's satire of prison exploitation/blaxploitation/etc pulp novels but also mmm.. well, also, KSD is clearly doing a lot of legwork right now to set up further plot developments, which I'm happy to wait and see develop.
