Publisher: Image Comics
Story: Kelly Sue DeConnick
Art: Laurenn McCubbin
Release Date: 10th December 2015

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How can you resist a title like that? Bitch Planet looks like a Blaxploitation book and reads far more powerfully. The concept of Mother Earth has been redefined – Mother Space is second to Father Earth and the Father’s of Earth have decided that women who are not ‘compliant’ in any way they deem appropriate must be shipped off to Bitch Planet – officially known as Auxiliary Compliance Outpost.

So, in a dual narrative we get to se the latest batch of bitches sent off to the Planet – naked as the day of course – and we get to see a man on Earth plead with the powers-that-be to release his wife who has been seized in error. Shifting frames tell us that the man had an affair, the woman blames herself, he needed attention, she was tired and non-compliant. Strings are pulled and the woman is given the ‘Red Window’. Is this a way home? Is this a menstrual euphemism from those poor put-upon men? Or is it something far more sinister?

In the scenes back on Bitch Planet, alongside the story of the cuckold woman, we meet some of the characters who will figure in future issues. It’s like Oz meets Handmaid’s Tale meets Prisoner Cell Block H. A Walking Dead-like Michonne kicks some ass.

The artwork is pretty solid; bold, flat colours and thick solid lines. This is going to be a brutal, powerful comic with a statement to convey and the artwork isn’t going to…for want of a better phrase…pussyfoot around.

You don’t need to be a feminist to like it…but it helps. Here’s a non-compliant being compliant about a great new comic.

Rating: 5/5

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The Writer of this piece was: Hazel Hay

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