Women in Comics: Bitch Planet
I can’t tell you how many girl crush #’s I’ve used to say that I love Kelly Sue DeConnick. But here I go again. Let me add gratuitously to the pile of praise heaped on to Image Comic’s intersectional feminist baby: Bitch Planet!
“What happens to Women Without Men?”
I’ve read the first 3 issues and it’s a self-aware Quentin Terantino-style retro women-in-prison exploitation series but set in the near future… In SPACE!!! (Terantino XXX and Girls in Prison from our extensive Movie T-shirts library.) The things that make BP so good are twofold: 1) Its use of diverse female characters to tell actual women’s stories of alienation, personal discovery and fighting the Patriarchy are as relevant as they are fun (and violent!). 2) After the first 2 issues setting up the setting and cast, each issue is using a special guest artist to highlight and tell a character’s personal story, interwoven into the larger narrative. This starts in issue #3, “The Secret History of Penny Rolle”, my personal favorite of the trio. In it, Big, bold and BAD Penny is taken from her loving home at a young age because her grandmother (and assumedly also mother) is a single, black, morbidly obese woman, which in this near-future dystopia is enough to make her considered “Non-Compliant” in the eyes of the state and nation: you don’t look like you should look or act like society wants you to act, you go to jail.
Girls and Women’s Tarantino XXX Tank Top – Cherry Bomb
Still, Penny is my hero because when forced to look through a magic-tech mirror (SPOILERS!) to see her most idealized self, she sees exactly who she is already: a big, angry, woman of color fighting to be free even in her cage. Because God don’t make no junk, and honey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
So, ladies, gentlemen, friends all across the gender spectrum, are you ready to party like it’s your last night before being shipped to Bitch Planet? Are you mad about the status quo? Are you ready to be Non-Compliant?
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