“I didn’t like the first issue, which I bought at the comics shop when it came out, but I picked up the trade at the library and figured I’d give it a second shot. Because there are so many things I feel like I SHOULD like about this. And I mean that a couple ways. I should like the politics, and I should like space prison in just about any form.
Politics aside for a second.
STORY:
Two issues end like bad Twilight Zone episodes. I don’t care for that. Just putting that on front street.
I also don’t like how long it takes to set up the premise. Let me lay it out for you in a almost-spoiler-free fashion:
Women are in space prison. They are invited/forced to put a team together to play in some future sports tournament. Basically, combine Running Man, Orange is the New Black, and Lockout, and we’re there.
That didn’t take very long to do here, but it’s taking FOREVER in the book. 5 issues in we’ve only had one scrimmage against prison guards.
Bitch Planet exists in a fictional world where all these other things like The Running Man don’t exist, but it’s being read in a world where we’re pretty familiar with fictional bloodsports as entertainment that are semi-enforced. The Running Man, Rollerball, Hunger Games, Battle Royale, Pigskin Footbrawl and Mutant League Hockey. Okay, maybe only myself and fans of the Sega Genesis really know those last two inside and out, but they were super fun.
I don’t really need the decompressed storytelling of this book to lay it out for me like I’ve never heard of this kind of thing before. It’s not that complicated. There’s a two-page spread that reads as a rule book and does the job just fine, but then we have a scrimmage that serves as a how-to and a discussion and repeated reminders that the total team weight has to be 2000 lbs. and oh it’s the most-watched show and blah-diddy-blah.
Can we get to the game already? That’s my number one complaint with comics anymore. We get it, can we get to the thing? Whether it be a crime that needs solving, a bad guy that needs punching, or a sorrowful memoir that needs sorrowfulling, let’s get to the damn thing already. I know you, as character, are having a rough time adjusting to your armadillo powers or whatever, but I, as a reader, have watched plenty of teens struggle with the onset of animal-based superpowers, so let’s hurry it up a bit, if you’d be so kind.
Now, here’s the other thing. These characters are pretty boring. We get a backstory on one character, but…I didn’t get it. I mean, I get that her mom was locked up or something, and I get that the lady opened a muffin store and everyone watches something called The Feed, and I think I understood the events, but for a backstory, I didn’t get a lot. How does this woman feel beyond mad? What happened to her mom? Was the guy who was arrested on TV supposed to be her dad, or was that totally unrelated? Where did she get her (admittedly totally positive and awesome) sense of self-esteem?
We’re moving so slowly plot-wise, I feel like there’d be more time for characters here. But it feels like we’re rushing past characters to get to the story, and then the story is moving SO SLOW.
ART
I don’t have big complaints about the art, the figures, the individual images or the faces, but the action isn’t expressed all that well all the time. There was a scene where *I THINK* the women are all running on a giant treadmill thing with parallel little treadmill tracks? There was a fight in the first issue where a character was protecting another character from guards, and the guards somehow got behind the protector character and killed the protected character? I was having a difficult time tracking the characters in space during the sports section. The space and bodies in the space are tough for me to keep up with. And the shower sequence, that I was confused as hell about, and not even because of my budding attraction to a woman with some kind of computer chip laser eye. I just didn’t know who was where when or who was talking.
Also, there are issues in this book that have the thing going where it’s hard to tell if you’re supposed to read across both pages or down one page and then up to the top of the next. Total pet peeve of mine.
THE POLITICS
Men bad. Women good.
Actually, that’s not my complaint about the politics. My complaint is that the best expression of the politics evident in Bitch Planet were in an essay at the end of print issue 1 by Danielle Henderson, an essay that’s NOT REPRINTED IN THE TRADE! What the hell, people?!
I don’t really have a lot else to say about the politics other than…I kinda think my rating is low because I just don’t think these are great comics, even if the politics make an interesting point.
It’s like a movie with a great idea that just isn’t executed in a great way. Prime example being Howard the Duck, naturally.
I don’t disagree with the politics. But I didn’t find the story, characters, or dialog to be memorable.
Wait, I do disagree with one thing, which is adding discussion questions to your own book. Ew.
Oh, AND, big huge AND, if they didn’t specifically tell you we were in space prison YOU’D NEVER KNOW! There’s nothing space prison about anything that’s happening. Where are the magnet boots? Where are the laser handcuffs? Where’s the zero gravity solitary confinement? Where’s the space food? I want some cool space prison shit, dammit. “