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Bitch Planet #7

Script by Kelly Sue DeConnick @kellysue

Art by Valentine De Landro @valentinedelandro

Digging our own graves

Bitch Planet is set in a dystopia where women are imprisoned for non-compliance to an extreme set of patriarchal values.  I can always tell I’m going to like a person when I explain this and their response is some version of, “Isn’t the real world set in that dystopia?”

Indeed.

In the first volume of Bitch Planet, inmates are offered a chance to earn their freedom from the Auxiliary Compliance Outpost in exchange for participating in a brutal sport known as Megaton.  The public face of the game’s judges is a woman named Whitney.  She’s blond and pretty and smiling.  She does what’s expected of her.

Whitney has navigated the structures of patriarchy through compliance to earn her position of power. In issue 7 we see just how illusory that power is.  Her world runs on the disempowerment of women.  When your worth is calculated by your usefulness in your own oppression, any power you earn can be taken away, used against you, at any moment.

Contrast Whitney to characters like Penny and Kamau, who support one another through moments of strength and fragility, and the message is clear.  If we aren’t standing together we might as well be digging our own graves.

Valentine De Landro’s art manages to walk the line of referencing a 70’s exploitation film aesthetic without falling into lurid objectification of his characters.  This is no small feat considering how much nudity is in the book, but it’s a great example of nudity done right.  And how do I explain Kelly Sue DeConnick?  Kelly Sue is flawless.  One time she punched the patriarchy in the face.  

It was awesome.

Tia Vasiliou is a Digital Editor at ComiXology. She pretty much never shuts up about feminism.