Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro convert, subvert and invert the usual comic book construct, which adds to the subtext of what this book is doing to social paradigms. Bitch Planet #1 opens on Earth, and a woman running late for an appointment. The panel composition takes us from the perceived freedom of the outside (though based on the billboards and signage around there is no real freedom on this Earth), to the confines of a recording studio by utilizing a variation of the 4 x 3 panel grid, the outside retreating until, in the last row, there is one outdoor panel and three indoor panels, tracking the woman’s arrival. She then goes on to record a subliminal creation myth designed for the Non-Compliant, women sent to an off-world penal colony (pun intended), to hear while they sleep in suspended animation.
We are then introduced to Marian Collins and her husband, who is seemingly attempting to gain her release from “Bitch Planet”. There’s a fantastic page, again, a 4 x 3 grid, where Marian and her husband explain why they want freedom, each from their own separate physical prison, though Mr. Collins is in a prison of infidelity as he admits to having an affair with Dawn, a younger woman.
Marian goes through the rest of the book as the protagonist, until the reveal at the end where the entire story is flipped upside down. Marian, a fairly typical white woman with whom the reader has spent the entire issue attempting to relate, is killed, and the real protagonist, Kamau Kogo, takes center stage.
Kamau has an afro.
Kamau knows how to kick all sorts of ass.
Kamau is not your typical protagonist.
Kamau is someone I need to read more about.
Bitch Planet isn’t just a tremendous first issue. Bitch Planet is a call to arms for anyone creating comics today.
As Christopher Sebela announced last night on Twitter – “Bitch Planet #1 is a giant mic dropping on all our heads.”
- Aloha -
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