“I walked into a comics store yesterday for one thing: Spider-Man and the X-Men written by the hilarious Elliott Kalan. Being the first time I’d been in a comics store for a few years, I picked up some other stuff too, including this one.
Okay, I picked up a lot of stuff. Enough that the store owner asked if I lived in the area and strongly pushed his reserve system. Which he was totally right to do as it took everything in me to say “I’ll think about it” instead of “Yes, all the comics, please.”
The Orange Is The New Black comparisons are unavoidable, or rather, The Space Orange is the New Space Black comparisons, because to the book’s credit, it does happen in space. It’s a thing prisons do in fiction. They’re in space or the ocean or whatever, and that way the prison is INESCAPABLE.
Now, that’s the element of this book I liked. It was like a cheesy action movie in some ways, but with a lady cast. I’m totally down with that. When you use space prison, you’re going the Face/Off, Escape Plan, G.I. Joe Retaliation, Lockout route, which is a great one. Just in case anyone was curious, the prisons from those movies are offshore oil rig thing, cargo ship in the ocean, so deep under the earth that laws don’t apply, and space. Jump in those waters, by all means. I’m into it. When you call your book BITCH PLANET I have some ideas about where you might be going, and I’m excited.
What I wasn’t so into was the way this issue was written. Okay, you have space ladies in space prison, and somehow there’s this subplot where a man is desperately trying to get his wife back from space prison -so we think- until we discover he was really trying to get his MISTRESS back from space prison because his wife is an older lady, so obviously a man would have no interest in her.
It’s not even the over-the-top story there, it’s the way it’s told so I, as a reader, am confused as all hell. It’s written to be confusing on purpose, so I’m assuming he’s trying to get his wife back, and then when he gets his mistress I’m supposed to be like, “MEN! Of course!” And it’s not even that message that turned me off, it was the way it felt like a bad Twilight Zone.
A good Twilight Zone, it ends and you go, “Holy shit!”
A bad Twilight Zone, it ends and you go, “Hey…I feel a very strong editing hand in this tale that purposely obscured the story and key details that would have blown the surprise.”
Because really, any story is a surprise if you cut out a bunch of stuff. The reason something like the Sixth Sense is kinda cool is that you get to the end and you feel like all the evidence of the ghostliness was there the entire time. Nothing was hidden from you, the viewer. You flash back to scenes that were IN THE MOVIE. The storyteller gave you all the pieces of the puzzle.
This story, to me, was riding on making a point, decided to make that point, but didn’t go about it in a way that worked. The story seemed subordinate to the larger point, which is an okay thing to do, but probably not something I’ll pick up at the comic shop again.
Also, it was a buck more than the other books I bought.
Extra points for a lady-focused story, and the essay on feminism at the end was one of the best parts, though not be the credited author of the book.”