Bitch Planet #3 Review

Written by: Kelly Sue DeConnick

Art by: Robert Wilson IV

Publisher: Image

Bitch Planet #3 is an absolute powerhouse of an issue. While Bitch Planet has been an outstanding comic series that touches upon a ton of important feminist issues, issue #3 is going to be the issue that everyone talks about. While the issue is nothing more than a look into a character’s back-story, the messages at hand are loud, clear, and powerful in what they represent.

Part of what makes Bitch Planet so interesting as a series is that we’re given a group of women who are simply being called “non-compliant”. The series has given us small glimpses of what non-compliance may be but it has never tackled the issue of what non-compliance can mean as a whole in such a way as presented here. And what is presented is sure to make people uncomfortable as it tackles a variety of issues that seem to slap us in the face and make us question our own intersectionality as people, activists, and even feminists.

Bitch Planet has been introducing us to our main cast of characters since the first issue but we don’t really know them outside of their brief scenes. In a nice departure from the main series, issue #3 is devoted entirely to telling the story of Penny Rolle, whom most of us fell in love with during the epic background brawl found in issue #2. We don’t know much about her and Kelly Sue DeConnick has expertly written that into the overall narrative of Bitch Planet. We know that Penny is overweight. We know that Penny is woman of color, presumably black. We know that Penny seems to love a good fight and doesn’t talk too much. And DeConnick has let us make our own assumptions about her life, and her crimes, up until now.

Which is exactly why this issue ends up being one huge sucker punch to the gut.

Penny Rolle is, quite honestly, a very ordinary character. However, the way DeConnick manages to expand upon small details to tell us a larger story is outstanding and even gives us a larger picture of the world Bitch Planet is set in. And the reason why it hits so hard is that many of the values, and crimes, within this world aren’t too far off from those within reality.

Without ruining Penny’s fantastic story, Bitch Planet #3 tips us off that interracial relationships are a crime and that being overweight and overall not physically desirable to men is a crime. And both can lead to being jailed (or worse). Yet the real horror of these things is in how DeConnick manages to slip them into the every day world within Bitch Planet.

The casual sexism and misogyny is found throughout. Girls split a single muffin three ways and discuss their various weight loss methods. Men continually comment on Penny in regards to her weight and how it’s “no wonder she can’t find a man”. Women don’t have names, they’re simple known as the Mrs. to the Mr. But what really surprised me was the way DeConnick handled the issue of race and racism.

It’s easy to have a conversation about racism when it comes to extremes. Slurs, hate crimes, and so on are generally panned. What DeConnick does for Bitch Planet, however, is tips us into the world of casual racism that tends to get an OK. Penny’s hair is called too confusing. It’s not black enough and it’s not white enough. People don’t know what to do with it and, in a world in which interracial relationships are forbidden, it’s a clue as to the crimes that Penny’s family committed. However, there’s a scene near the end that’s particularly worth talking about. When two men are discussing Penny’s weight and appearance and who would find that attractive, they dip into a discussion that turns into one that’s unfortunately all too common. Penny’s appearance suddenly turns into the perceived preference for “Skins” (which we can take to mean black people), with their “big asses and big lips”, and the conversation suddenly turns into the classic conversation of racial fetishizing and how wild Skins are in bed.

And really, that’s just a more extreme form of what Bitch Planet is all about. That fine line that women walk between being desirable but not too desirable. Your traits and features being panned except when used as some form of conquest or criteria for a bucket list. DeConnick not only manages to create a discussion about these things, but she does it in a way that doesn’t necessarily point fingers at anyone but makes us question our own actions. Are we doing things for ourselves? Am I guilty of this behavior? Are my friends guilty of this behavior? After all, the women in Bitch Planet are often just as willing to uphold the ideas of the Fathers as the men themselves are.

Which is ultimately why Bitch Planet succeeds in what it does. It’s one thing to call into question aspects of society. It’s another thing to show us these problems. We can laugh at a panel of 3 women slicing a simple muffin into thirds until we realize we’re a society that hyped up things like the Grapefruit diet. We can laugh at men commenting on how desirable a woman is or isn’t until we realize our magazines habitually sell us articles on fashion trends men love/hate. And we can laugh at men discussing how the sex with a Skin must be wild until we realize that all too often that’s used as a pick-up line. Basically, Bitch Planet‘s conversations are all ones we’ve had at some point of time. Or heard. Or maybe even demanded. Bitch Planet is an extreme, yes, but it’s not hard to draw parallels with our own society.

Robert Wilson IV joins this issue as a guest artist and I barely noticed. Wilson’s art is pretty close to the regular art of the series which means that it won’t be too jarring between issues, which I personally find to be a good thing. Wilson does draw his stuff with a little more of a pop art influence and smoother lines and I actually found myself preferring it this way. The pop art influences seem to enhance some of the messages of the story, especially when its beauty ideals being discussed by a smiling figurehead acting like it’s all for some sort of greater good. I hope Wilson comes back in some form (perhaps for other character issues) because his art was a perfect fit for Bitch Planet.

Bitch Planet #3 was everything I have been wanting out of this series. Hard-hitting, conscious, emotional, heavy, and uplifting all in one. It’s important to have these conversations and DeConnick seems unafraid to address any and all aspects of what being a woman actually means as well as what to say of a society that demands to define womanhood. And with the final page of issue #3, DeConnick has erased any fears I may have had about this series. At its core, Bitch Planet is simply about the right to be yourself. However you define that.