In the beginning there was just a name, but it was a damn good one: Bitch Planet.
From there, comic book writer Kelly Sue DeConnick worked backward, creating a feminist, sci-fi tale about gladiatorial ladies in space prison. It takes some of the most exploitative tropes about incarcerated women, tears out their sexist heart, and shoots what remains into another galaxy.
Although details remain vague in this week's debut issue, Bitch Planet is set in a dystopian future where women who deviate from traditional gender roles are punished as criminals by a totalitarian government. Do something that gets you labeled as "non-compliant" and you might be exiled to the off-world penal colony colloquially known as Bitch Planet. DeConnick says the comic was inspired by the women-in-prison exploitation films of the 1960s and '70s, a genre notorious for inflicting voyeuristic, sexualized abuse on incarcerated women—and one that has a complicated place in her heart.
"They're packaged as though they're really progressive, but the crimes against these women are meant to be titillating," says DeConnick, sitting in a coffee shop in Portland, Oregon. "They set up these scenes with the intention of the viewer taking voyeuristic pleasure in the degradation of the woman, but then all is forgiven because she gets her revenge. It's sort of the dictionary definition of exploitation."
Although she finds the films disconcerting and sometimes difficult to watch as an adult—"I had to turn one off the other day because the sexy, romantic '70s music during the rape scene was just too much for me"—she remembers really enjoying them when she was growing up. "I started thinking," she says. "Why did I love those movies? What was I responding to? Are there ways that I can use those same tropes to a different end? I don't know! Let's find out."
In the first issue, we meet the latest group of women unlucky enough to end up on Bitch Planet and quickly learn what it means to be incarcerated on Auxillary Compliance Outpost Intake Facility Two. The comic smartly reframes the voyeurism of exploitation films as acts of oppression; instead of offering the women as titillation, the comic shows what appear to be television producers watching video feeds of the imprisoned women and editing their abuse—and willingness to fight back—into some sort of sensational reality show. Much like the films, there's tons of female nudity, but this too is handled differently by DeConnick and artist Valentine De Lando.
"One of the things we talked about was the use of nudity in [exploitation] films, where the women are nude and deliberately provocative," says DeConnick. "I'm OK with the reader being uncomfortable with nudity, but I don't want the reader to be deliberately aroused by it. These women are beautiful, but I wanted them presented with lumps and bumps and muscles and scars. Bodies as bodies."
She and De Lando strove to give the characters a wide array of body types and skin tones. The cast is comprised largely of women of color, something that intimidated DeConnick at first; she didn't want to misrepresent anyone's experiences. "But it was gently pointed out to me that I give this snarky answer when people ask me how write female characters: Pretend they're people. If I'm intimidated writing a cast of color because it's not my personal experience, it's the same thing: Well, dumbass, pretend they're people."
Although writers often are told to write what they know, DeConnick calls that advice "incredibly dangerous. If we all only write our personal experiences, we'd just have a library of narcissists. We have this obsession with our own reflections," she says. "Instead, what we have to do as artists, is be brave enough to know what we write, instead of write we know. Employ your empathy. Find the humanity in one another."
Every third issue of Bitch Planet will be illustrated by a guest artist and tell the story of how a character landed in prison. If that sounds a lot like Orange Is the New Black, it's merely coincidence. "I haven't seen the show," DeConnick says. "I deliberately haven't watched it because I'm terrified of being paralyzed by it."
The first backstory issue focuses on Penny Roll, a woman who's been incarcerated for crimes that include assault, "follicular mutilation" (shaving her head), and "wanton obesity." The crime, DeConnick says, isn't that Penny is overweight, "it's that she's unashamed of it. But that's the beauty of Penny. Penny does not give a fuck what you think."
Although the book's awesome but off-color title could mean some comic shops can't stock it (or at least display it on shelves), DeConnick thinks any lost sales will balance out due to good buzz about the series—and interest from digital readers. Publisher Image Comics sells all its titles digitally and DRM-free, making them instantly available to new or different audiences that might never step foot inside a comic book shop.
Although DeConnick has written creator-owned titles before, like the lyrical western series Pretty Deadly, she's best known for her Marvel superhero books, particularly Captain Marvel. Not only is DeConnick one of the most vocal and high-profile female writers in superhero comics, her Captain Marvel is one of the publisher's few titles led by a female hero and has inspired a devoted fan following known as the Carol Corps. Of course, not everyone is so enthusiastic; despite the feminist roots of the character, DeConnick says she's often accused of bringing an "agenda" to Captain Marvel.
"That was how [the character] was created well before me, when I was 7!" DeConnick says with exasperation. "So there's a part of me [with Bitch Planet] that's like, 'Well, if my rep is going to be angry feminist, let me show you angry feminist.'"
If the first issue is any indication, Bitch Planet aims to deliver its form of feminism like a roundhouse kick to the face, with the help of a cell block full of fierce, ass-kicking women ready to fight the man and burn the system down at any cost.
"I'm not that complex at my core," says DeConnick. "The moment when the almost-defeated hero gets up? I am forever looking for that moment. You think she's down, you think she's dead, but she finds the strength to get up one more time, the blood dripping from her broken teeth and a look on her face that says, 'Oh, your ass is mine.' I am forever writing to get to that."
