Comic Review: Bitch Planet #4

Is there any greater compliment for art of any sort than to say that when I finished reading Bitch Planet #4, I felt energized. Indeed I was all fired up despite being on day 4 of some sort of intestinal bug and in week 34 of pregnancy. From a comic book.

So kudos to Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine deLandro for an issue that keeps upping the ante and pace of the first two (BP #3 was a kind of origin story issue out of the regular plot’s timeline). Kudos to DeConnick for a letter to the readership addressing the backlash of a few vocal male fans on Twitter to readers permanently tattooing themselves with the NC logo. Kudos to Mikki Kendall for a spot-on, insightful essay on the many hierarchies of oppression in culture and how feminism needs to look straight into its dark recesses to better support its overlooked and undersupported members. Kudos to a wonderful collection of reader feedback that not only shows the book due love but also builds a community of voices.

Cover to cover, this issue just spins!

As advertised in the last issue, #4 offers the genre exploitative shower scene. In fact, there are two. And according to the letter to readers from DeConnick, getting them right was what pushed back publication on this issue. Artist deLandro spoke to the difficulty of balancing the female form, the sexuality, and mastering the use of male gaze in a wonderful interview at Comicosity: Game Changers. DeLandro offers up his experience in drawing the women of Bitch Planet:

I’m trying to avoid that salaciousness. It was harder in the beginning, but now it’s becoming a little more natural to draw the women and not try to sexualize them. It’s one of those things I thought would be easy until I had to do it. I realized that I have a lot of bad habits, looking [at] attractive women and translating that to the page. And it’s not that the women I’m drawing aren’t attractive, but it’s seeing them in a different way. Trying to translate that onto the page authentically is challenging.

The shower scenes have four different depictions of women in them–the break-down of which I’ll get into in my analysis of the issue in a coming post–and deLandro manages a continuum of non-sexualized to sexualized to masterful effect. I adore that deLandro has recognized his own habitual gaze and has been transformed by drawing this comic into an artist who can pull off the deft handling of the shower scenes. Even if it meant reworking it three times to make sure it was right. I’m a big fan of art as a process.

In addition, the issue offers the rules of Duemila as mansplained via Barbies. Kam continues to put together her team, which introduces tension and some secrets. The info graphic explanation of the rules in both satirically hilarious and ironically disturbing.

And the final pages offer a satisfying action scene in the style of Pam Grier with the cherry on top of a character reveal.

This issue is not to be missed!

Comic Review: Bitch Planet #2

With the first issue of Kelly Sue DeConnick’s Bitch Planet, I did a page-by-page analysis. I’ll do that with this one too, because there is plenty to talk about in the scenery and references, but I wanted to start with a good ol’ relatively spoiler-free review of Issue #2.

Most importantly, the issue lives up to its predecessor. Like the issue prior, this one is provocative, thoughtful, intriguing, and, at turns, unnerving. It lacks the gut-punch bait-and-switch of the first issue but trades that in for a twisting of the knife, a deepening of the cut.

Our issue picks up back on Earth where the back room of a catered dinner convention is taking place. With the exception of the white manager, all of the staff has browner shades of skin. The cooks are men, the waitresses are women, and this double divide–race and gender–sets the stage for a speech a very important man is making to the gathered attendees. They are exclusively white, fancily dressed in tuxes and ballgowns. The Man is speechifying on tribes, discussing the us versus them mentality, and in so doing highlighting the running theme of the comic.

Like in the previous issue, the system seems to deconstruct itself on the page. The voices of power directly addressing the powerless but not understanding the ramifications of what they say to the silently witnessing audience (that’s us, readers!).

What the issue also delivers is more wonderful Kamau action. She’s approached to create a team of sports-gladiators for the Megaton games out of the inmates on Bitch Planet. Engagement in the games is down, and Roberto Solanza of last issue thinks a nice non-compliant team might be the answer. She doesn’t know what’s in it for her except public humiliation and a loss of dignity, but the other inmates begin to change her mind.

We also get more on the workings of Bitch Planet as well as the group of men known as the Fathers who apparently pull the strings of society. And we get more dystopian, sci-fi-oriented, compliance and non-compliance in relief. Artist Valentine de Landro continues to draw whole narratives into the background of scenes, deepening the world and adding ironies both humorous and disturbing.

DeConnick writes at the back of the issue that the story is mapped for 30 issues, coming out monthly. Next issue will be a special back story on our beloved “Born Big” Penny Rolle, out Feb 18. That’s only 2 weeks away, but I’m just itching to have it in my hands already.

 

 

Comic Review: Bitch Planet #1 Part I

A friend of mine passed along this issue to me. She said she suspected it was brilliant but wanted some assurance that she wasn’t off-the-mark. She is not one to normally lack confidence in her reading of a text, but given the nature of the comic, I now understand why she was a bit unsure.

In Simulacra and Simulation, Jean Baudrillard wrote that prisons are there to hide the fact that society itself is a prison, at its very nature carceral. Bitch Planet appears to be a prison that is built to reveal the fact that society is a prison.

Bitch Planet, written by Kelly Sue DeConnick and drawn by Valentine de Landro, is using the sci-fi sub-genre of women’s penitentiary exploitation to critique the contemporary systems oppressing women of all races, but especially women of color. It’s not critiquing the genre but, in fact, using it as a structure to critique our own capitalist “free state.”

That’s some tricky business. And it may be brilliant. Comics often further societal misogyny through the objectification of women–as sex objects, victims of villains’ violence, damsels in distress, or, in some of the best cases, superheroines with barely enough clothing to cover their unrealistically proportioned tits and ass. How does an author sell a comic that wants to critique and condemn that same system? Well, you could hide it in a traditionally misogynistic format which exploits nudity and violence against women while at the same time shows women as tough survivors. Yeah, okay, brilliant.

On the cover, a silhouetted woman is manacled but giving the finger with both upraised hands. The exploitation-styled text reads: “GIRL GANGS…CAGED AND ENRAGED!” It is an apt image for this comic that walks a razor-thin line between itself becoming exploitative and offering a critique. This is not a comic for the squeamish or prudish. In fact, though the comic exhibits aspects of Minority Report, Django Unchained, The Shawshank Redemption, and Cabin in the Woods, it most reminds me of Alan Moore’s Watchmen. It is a structurally dense take-down of oppressive systems of society through a familiar genre. It even includes an essay and fake, thematic mail-in ads.

Now come the spoilers. I’m going to attempt a close reading of this comic, because it honestly has me fascinated, and as an English teacher, I don’t know a better way to solidify my thoughts on its meaning(s). However this particular blog post will only spoil the first page of the comic. Later parts will spoil the rest. I suggest you get your hands and eyes on this comic as soon as you can. Then come back for the full shake-down.

The opening panels depict a black woman rushing through a crowded, futuristic street. She asks to be excused and pardoned by the people she rushes between, apologizes profusely to another. Before her is seemingly projected the word “APOLOGIZE.” It is unclear whether this is a hologram from a corporation or government (or amalgamation of the two) or a visualization of her conscience. The text matches that of billboard screens shining down on the streets, signs urging dieting, purchasable fixes to problems, and, above all, compliance. “BECAUSE HE SAID SO.” One projected screen says, “You’re hungry.” Another says, “You’re fat.” These are the paradoxes of capitalist, fascist society. A drone flies overhead, seemingly a police vehicle as designated by its red and blue lights. It insinuates that non-compliance is dealt with swiftly.

The woman is rushing to work. Her male manager is complaining about her lateness, giving a countdown to when she’ll be fired and he’ll do the job for her. She bursts into the recording studio just in time, asking him to tell her who she will be today as she places the headset on and begins to record a message for the sleeping passengers on the way to Bitch Planet. She is not non-compliant. She apologizes, she rushes to meet someone else’s schedule, she conforms her identity to the whims of her male manager’s instruction. Not a moment is spent determining the cause of her lateness–whether this is a character trait or the consequence of some personal emergency. She is there simply to fill a role compliantly.

This is the “free world” the comic introduces us to before setting us off to the penitentiary world of Bitch Planet. But the repressive elements are clear. The bars of this society are seen in the standards of beauty and compliance, and the men are the gatekeepers.

Read Part II here.