“You need to learn to see yourself through the Fathers’ eyes”
Feminism, Representation, and the Dystopian Space of Bitch Planet
This essay was originally published in Feminist Review 116 (1): Dystopias and Utopias, July 2017. Edited by Gina Heathcote and Helen M. Kinsella. Palgrave Macmillan 2017. Reprinted by permission of Palgrave Macmillan.1
The striking thing about Bitch Planet is that we’re already on it. — Danielle Henderson
The easiest way to take power from people is to make them think they don’t have any. — Alice Walker
Dystopia derives from the Greek dis topos meaning a “bad”—or “not good”—place. John Stuart Mill (1868) coined dystopia to contrast with Thomas More’s (1516) notion of utopia.2 Dystopian fiction represents, “a society worse than the existing one” and, on the surface at least, the world of Bitch Planet bears all the hallmarks of being a very bad place—if you’re a woman that is.3
Bitch Planet (2014-2017) is a comic book series created by Kelly Sue DeConnick (writer) and Valentine De Landro (artist) with colours by Cris Peter and letters by Clayton Cowles. The action takes place in a future Earth society, one grossly distorted through “root and branch” gender bias and oppression. Story arcs move back and forth through time with the first issue revealing, through the terrifying tale of the ill-fated Marian Collins, the repressive restructuring of the newly re-ordered Earth and its off-world prison, Bitch Planet.4
Through a series of clever switching viewpoints, we learn that Marian Collins’ husband has grown tired of her and wants to replace her with his younger mistress, Dawn. Taking advantage of a corrupt system, Mr. Collins arranges Marian’s incarceration on Bitch Planet.
But this is not the end of the affair; the situation leads to the mistaken arrest of Dawn, the new Mrs. Collins. Bribery sees the matter resolved: Dawn is to be released, and Marian is to be murdered upon her arrival on Bitch Planet. But in an unexpected turn of events, some of Marian’s fellow prisoners come to her aid, but it is not enough to save her from the guards’ brutal attack.5
Resistance is not always grand gestures but can be small moments of solidarity and kindness in the face of implacable authority.
In this powerful story arc, we see disempowered women showing solidarity. Showing agency. Showing power. And though this show of defiance is ultimately absorbed and subdued by the system, the women protecting Marian open a site of resistance and show another way of being in the world. They confirm this not only for one another and their nonparticipating fellow prisoners but also for the guards and the two “overseers”, who observe and control everything from the safety of their command post. It also indicates to readers that there are many ways of fighting back and that resistance is not always grand gestures but can be small moments of solidarity and kindness in the face of implacable authority. The opening issue sets the tone and thematic focus for the entire series. Readers can have no doubt about what to expect in the following issues: women uniting to combat rampant patriarchy.
Throughout the series DeConnick and De Landro knowingly tap into established exploitation genres, dystopian motifs, subtexts, and narrative traditions. It is a chilling vision, realistically and brutally rendered. Over the first five issues, readers are introduced to life in the “new protectorate” and its off-world woman-only prison facility, “Bitch Planet”—or as it is more formally known, the “Auxiliary Compliance Outpost”.6
In the opening pages of the second issue, we meet the leaders—the Fathers—of this reimagined society; perhaps unsurprisingly they are all straight white elder men.7 The scene takes place at the launch party of a new season of the state-approved global arena game, “Duemila”, or as it is more colloquially known, “Megaton”—of which more later.8 This staging provides an unflinching insight into the organisational structure of this world. In a few short pages, we watch the objectification, servitude, and hierarchicalisation of women: “wives” appear veiled and unavailable, while waitresses are unveiled and, all wearing the same uniform short cocktail dresses, appear available and subservient. We observe the valorisation of binaries and borders and notice that hierarchies and paternalism also affect male relations. We witness the glorification of violence and its role in feigning security and harmony: “To peace… and the blood thirsty rites that help us to keep it… Let the games begin!”.9
By setting much of its action on a prison planet, the creators summon the popular women-in-prison genre, from Prisoner: Cell Block H (1979-1986) to Netflix’s hit series Orange is the New Black (2013-2019).10 Prison backdrops are tried and tested spaces for exploring power dynamics, gender inequalities, and sexuality. But alongside the prison-based drama, Bitch Planet also features an ultra-violent arena game, “Megaton”. Televised survival or death games are a popular motif in dystopian fictions.11 As liminal spaces, “games” create potential sites of resistance for oppressed populations to disrupt and counter state power and dominant social forces. And in exploring the power dynamics of the “gaze” (and, relatedly, state surveillance and voyeurism), gender roles and traditions, female solidarity, activism, sexualities, and “sisterhood”, this feminist dystopian comic book speaks uniquely and powerfully to connections between feminist theory and dystopian fiction.
Comics too can function as ideologically resistant spaces, both literally and figuratively. Parodying the layouts of early comics, readers of Bitch Planet are, for example, presented with a page of classified advertisements, or “back page garbage”, at the end of each issue.12 Here readers acquire additional nuggets of information about characters and the world in which they live. We see adverts for temporary “NC” (non-compliant) tattoos, Agreenex pills, taglined, “Because He’s Sick of Your S***”, and vaginal douches, “What every girl should know. Your vagina is disgusting”. From a fashion advertisement, we learn that Bitch Planet prison guards wear face masks as protection against the alien environment, yet prisoners do not wear them. But, there are also resistive spaces, smaller personal “Missed Connection” ads, where activist citizens—and comics creators—subvert the media by running statistics on female domestic violence and deaths. It is a powerful, uplifting experience to read these small shout-outs against an oppressive regime: people create ways, spaces, to resist.
Bitch Planet is something of a rarity in the comics world, for whilst there are feminist comics and comics with a feminist bent, there are few feminist dystopian comic book fictions.13 At the same time, Bitch Planet is not a lone voice; as a radical evocation and criticism of patriarchy, it sits comfortably alongside other established works of feminist dystopian fiction, such as, The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood, 1985), Walk to the End of the World (Suzy McKee Charnas, 1974), and Native Tongue (Suzette Haden Elgin, 1984) and more recently the female-led action film, Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). Like all of these texts, Bitch Planet enquires into the subjugation of women and the ways in which women comply with, and subvert, patriarchal control, showing a particular interest in how women secure agency under such limiting conditions.
What are the best tactics to resist an oppressive system—from inside or outside?
Feminist dystopian fiction reveals, queries, and opposes patriarchy. It draws attention to the far-reaching consequences of gender-bias present within contemporary societies. It criticises and encourages readers to adopt a questioning position. Each stand-alone issue of Bitch Planet contains a guest essay, and at the end of the first collected edition, comprised of Issues 1 to 5, we find a “discussion guide”.14 This guide asks readers to consider: how does the text operate as an allegory for women today? What are the best tactics to resist an oppressive system—from inside or outside? It also introduces the idea of intersectionality, citing Kimberlé Crenshaw, and calls for readers to consider media representations and their own lives in light of this powerful concept.15
In presenting a diverse range of women of colour, each facing multiple modes of oppression, and in resisting placing a white woman at the centre of the narrative—indeed killing her off—Bitch Planet functions as a powerful evocation of intersectional feminism. Initially conceptualised by feminists of colour in response to white-centric feminist thinking, intersectionality has been eagerly appropriated by theorists from other standpoints.16 For Avtar Brah, “it is imperative that we do not compartmentalise oppressions, but instead formulate strategies for challenging all oppressions on the basis of an understanding of how they interconnect and articulate”.17 A position echoed by Judith Butler who writes, “categories always work as background for one another, and they often find their most powerful articulation through one another.18 As Bitch Planet ably demonstrates, oppression so conceived enables consideration of identity as non-hierarchical and provides a valuable opportunity to challenge and destabilise binary thinking.
As an overtly feminist comic book, Bitch Planet stands as more than just an homage or pastiche of dystopic tropes and traditions: it breaks new ground. In DeConnick’s and De Landro’s portrayal of life under an extremist patriarchal regime, women are categorised as “compliant” or “non-compliant”, and while the latter are physically locked up, it soon becomes clear that all women within this society, no matter their socio-cultural standing, face confinement.
Given real-world prison demographics and increasingly spurious reasons for imprisonment, it is perhaps not surprising that most Bitch Planet inmates are women of colour imprisoned for contrived crimes. Alongside murder and theft, acts of non-compliance include: obesity, abortion, marital neglect, and “seduction and disappointment”. This framing device creates one of the highlights of this comic, its refreshingly diverse cast of female characters. Representing different kinds of women challenges the monolithic idea of “woman” and “women’s experience” (usually straight white and socio-economically privileged) and connectedly the idea of “Black women’s experience” or “lesbian experience” and replaces it with an intersectional understanding. In Bitch Planet, we see an array of women oppressed by the State, a representation that articulates the interconnectedness of oppression as it plays out on the subject. Bitch Planet offers an exaggerated account of contemporary Western society’s gender inequalities and the mechanisms in place for securing and maintaining as well as subverting socio-cultural hierarchies. It does so to thrill and chill, but also to inform and underscore real-world oppressions and the need for comprehensive social change.
The inclusion of the discussion guide, essays, and the direct reference to intersectionality signals a deliberate desire for Bitch Planet to function not only as a theoretical exploration of oppression, but also as a consciousness-raising tool. Bitch Planet invites readers to examine the social ordering of the “new protectorate” alongside that of contemporary Western society and systems which see androcentrism translated into a repressive and sexist social order. Bitch Planet, and other feminist dystopian texts, are not simply cautionary tales warning of bleaker futures. They are a call to arms and action: to awaken women’s sociopolitical consciousness, to arouse an awareness of real-world gender-based oppression.
By placing minoritarian women at its heart, Bitch Planet turns the status quo on its head, and by being a comic book, it is itself readable as an act—or object—of resistance to the “boy’s club” culture of mainstream comics.
Today, questions of diversity and uniformity dominate discussions around media representation. Although changing (slowly), mainstream comics culture is still male-dominated (from production to consumption) and known for issues around inclusivity and diversity. Lack of diversity concerns categories of identity and their intersections, through dimensions of, for example, gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity, and disability. A repeating image that is unrepresentative of the social world overwhelms characterisations within our mediascape: white, cis, straight, non-disabled, and male. By placing minoritarian women at its heart, Bitch Planet turns the status quo on its head, and by being a comic book, it is itself readable as an act—or object—of resistance to the “boy’s club” culture of mainstream comics. The following discussion focuses on issues central to feminist theorising and to this most dystopian fiction: namely, the role of the media and media representation as repressive tools and the control of women’s bodies.
Bitchin’ Representations
Feminist theorising recognises that media representations are just one of many sources that we draw upon to shape ourselves and our realities. Representations are powerful conduits for conveying ideas affecting our perception of self and others. They also operate as systems encouraging particular ideological agendas, fomenting partisan cultural systems. Aware of the effects of media representation, the creators of Bitch Planet powerfully demonstrate its use as a form of “soft power”. The State’s TV channel (the “feed”) nourishes the population, supplying everything they need to survive in the “new protectorate”. It is an unremitting diet of celebrity gossip, body shaming, and misogyny. The “feed” encourages women to compete for male attention, and men’s “appetites” are whetted by images of available, submissive women.
Within the storyworld of Bitch Planet, readers encounter several types of images of women. We see the diverse bodies of the prisoners, the militarised bodies of female guards and special agents, the uniform bodies of compliant women, and the state-approved “doll-like” representations of women appearing in the media “feed” and advertising. Prisoner bodies are presented in a non-sexualised manner, even when naked. Unlike women in the mediascape and holographic women, these bodies are not posed, but in repose—bodies that, compared to the ever-present “idealised” corseted bodies, “hang loose and free”. In contrast to the stereotypical “compliant” women, we see somatic variety in the prison population, especially in terms of race and ethnicity, body size, and hair types and styles. It is a welcome sight.
Yet, for all its positivity, prisoner bodies still conform to some troubling contemporary beauty myths and body norms. We see no elder women. No physically disabled women. No unruly body or facial hair, and pubic areas appear well-groomed. There is conformity in this hairlessness, for one imagines “compliant” women also perform body-work to ensure they remain appropriately hairless. And, curiously, we don’t see as many tattoos or body modifications as we might expect in a prison-tale. The exception being inmate Penny Rolle’s “born BIG” tattoo. Yet, tattoos are knowingly referred to within the “back page garbage” advertisements, and within Bitch Planet fandom and beyond, getting an “NC” tattoo is an increasingly popular and creative real-world activity.
Prisoner bodies are not only different sizes and shapes, but the inmates appear happy, despite the constant body shaming “feed”, with their “non-compliant” bodies, or are indifferent or unconcerned with the ways in which their bodies “fail” to meet societal expectations. Their bodies are just their bodies. Nothing more, nothing less. The representation of women at ease with their bodies disrupts current somatic realities where women are, from an early age, pressed into uneasy relationships with their bodies and with food. This is an area of urgent concern for feminist theorising, and one justly receiving an increasing amount of attention. Bitch Planet places such concerns front and centre, dedicating an entire issue to tackling issues around body diversity, fat shaming, and fat positivity.
In “The Secret Origin of Penny Rolle”, we see, through a series of emotive flashbacks, how the state has tried to control Penny Rolle’s action and agency by controlling her weight and appearance.19 Penny’s story is full of references to food and the body. Her name cleverly suggests the cake-like “jelly roll” and the “belly roll”—a physicality associated with overweight or obese people. She runs the “Born Big” bakery having first, as a “man-less” woman, secured “state sponsorship”. The staging of her early life story speaks directly to some of the somatic realities facing, particularly minoritarian, women and girls today (e.g., “taming” her hair with straighteners). We witness Penny struggling throughout her life to conform to the body ideals of the “new protectorate” and its demands that women be not just compliant, but “happily” compliant.
But Penny’s time as a complaisant woman ends early one morning in her bakery when, rallying her name, she takes up a rolling pin and starts “rolling heads”. This is a transformative moment for Penny, one representing the start of a new way of being—a status suggested by the titling of the issue as an origin story. Origin stories are a staple of the superhero genre, known for its transformations, superpowers, and heroism. This framing invites readers to view Penny as a hero, a status conferred throughout the whole series; Penny is, for example, one of the first inmates to jump in and use her power—a (rare) positive inscription of obesity—to selflessly defend Marian Collins. Penny transforms into a powerful, proud, “angry, black woman”—one no longer afraid to “talk back” and stop smiling.20 A female mentor once told a teenage Penny that, “You need to learn to see yourself through the Fathers’ eyes. And I will teach you, Penny. I will teach you, if it kills us both”.21 But back in the bakery, Penny is no longer afraid of being seen as non-compliant and as an angry, black woman or “killjoy”, and this insight allows her to finally reject compliancy.22
Bitch Planet and Bitch Planet are powerful sites of resistance where disempowered women (fictional and real) find power in seeing each other, seeing difference, and seeing resistance.
In the final pages of the issue, we see Penny joyfully “disappointing” and “failing” a panel of Fathers when she laughingly tells them, “I ain’t broke. … And you bastards ain’t never gonna break me”.23 In this scene, Penny has been forced—through coercion and technology—to reveal her ideal version of herself. The Fathers expect to see their ideal vision, but Penny shows them herself at that very moment. She refuses to see herself through the “Fathers’ eyes”, and it is this defiant act of self-confidence, self-belief, and self-love that lands Penny on Bitch Planet. For De Connick, “Penny’s crime is that she refuses to hate herself. Her revolutionary act is to see that there is nothing wrong with her.”24 The Fathers send “non-compliant” women into outer space to make them think that they have no power, but instead of falling in line, these women find space on that prison-planet to resist, to flex their power. Bitch Planet and Bitch Planet are powerful sites of resistance where disempowered women (fictional and real) find power in seeing each other, seeing difference, and seeing resistance.
The food theme continues in this issue as in the background of the bakery we see screens running the media “feed” or state television—indeed, Penny smashes one of the screens during her (re)assertion of herself. In the Bitch Planet storyworld, the media literally feeds the population a tabloid diet of celebrity gossip, sports, and “health” stories, including an item on, “How you can try the parasitic worm that is all the rage!”.25
And in a corner of Penny's bakery, we see three compliant white female customers sharing one sugar-free, salt-free, and gluten-free muffin, counting calories, sharing purging stories, and casually comparing and rating themselves against each other. This “competitive” theme appears again later when a “Father” tells his wife that, “Mothers are the natural enemies of teenaged girls. Competition for daddy’s attention”.26
Scenes such as these demonstrate how regimes encourage women to see themselves as in competition with each other and, furthermore, to fear “difference” and desire approval via “sameness”. This state grooming ensures a spirit of divisiveness amongst oppressed groups: regimes divide to conquer. The repetition of this theme suggests it as a concern not only within this text but within feminist theorising; as Audre Lorde writes, ‘As women, we have been taught to either ignore our differences or to view them as causes for separation and suspicion rather than as forces for change”.27 On Bitch Planet, however, women acknowledge their differences and understand that the key to beating the system lies in harnessing them.
This understanding is symbolically demonstrated by the selection of the Bitch Planet Megaton team. But first a word or two on Megaton. As noted, the inclusion of a globally televised ultra-violent arena game sees the creators of Bitch Planet draw upon an established dystopian motif. One need only think of dystopian narratives such as, The Hunger Games (2012-present) or The Running Man (1987), or even the real-life gladiatorial contests held in the Roman Colosseum, to see how Megaton functions as a means of controlling the “angry” urges of a suppressed population: “the Fathers believe that participation in sports culture is a healthy channel for what could otherwise be a destructive impulse to form factions”.28 The last thing the Fathers want is an irate, turned-on populace. Arena games are used to provide controlled moments of release, much like Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of carnival perhaps.29 Megaton is traditionally a male-only sport but, as told in the second issue, declining ratings and income streams leave the Fathers no option but to shake things up by introducing a female team into the competition. As the story unfolds, we see the smart, athletic heroine, Kamau Kogo (Kam), put together a Megaton team with the aim of sending an explosive message to the leaders and compliant citizens of the “new protectorate”.
Prison authorities frame Kam for the murder of inmate Marian Collins and threaten to proceed with murder charges unless she agrees to captain the Bitch Planet team. Kam was a professional athlete before the regime change and, alongside fearlessness, possesses an impressive set of street-fighting skills—displayed in her attempt to save, not kill, Marian Collins. Kam initially refuses to comply but is convinced by some fellow inmates to use the games as a stage to hit back at the Fathers and their repressive regime.
In a regulated world, Megaton provides women prisoners with the closest thing they’ll find to an unregulated space. Taking part in the competition conveys privileges to the team; as team captain, Kam experiences some autonomy (e.g., picking team members, making training plans), and while sport has rules, on the playing field the women players get a brief taste of freedom, equality, and community. Megaton teams are limited by combined weight (up to 2,000lbs) rather than by number of players. With the help of another inmate, Meiko, Kam selects her team members on the basis of somatic differences. Appreciating the uniqueness and advantages each player brings, Kam does not fill her team with the same type of athletic bodies; Meiko’s slender athleticism brings speed, whereas Penny’s grand size makes her great in defence. In so doing, Kam puts into practice Lorde’s credo: that we should regard and respect our differences as a source of resistance and change.
Bitch Planet is an “out and proud” feminist comic book. Its title alone gives a strong indication of its feminist intent. Its bold titling places “bitches” of all kinds at the heart of this tale and in so doing helps—in much the same way as the feminist media organisation, Bitch Media—to rewrite and reclaim the meaning of this all-to-common slur.30 “Bitch” describes not only the prison planet and its prisoners (often used by the prisoners to refer to one another and to the guards), but also refers to the objectionable condition of their incarceration.
In the comic, the idea of Mother Earth has been replaced by Father Earth, a simple but effective inversion. “Bitch Planet” is a popular colloquialism for the prison and one not approved by the State. Ordinary people have named this place. It is a small act of resistance, of ownership even, and considering the patriarchal “re-branding” of Earth by the State, it evokes ideas of an awakened, assertive, and alternative “Mother Earth”. A space where, although imprisoned, women experience a kind of freedom: one allowing them to be their own—different—kinds of women, and communities of women. Which are freer, “compliant” or “non-compliant” women? Prompting this question, the creators actively encourage readers to use this dystopian text as a stepping stone for questioning, developing, challenging, and changing their understandings of and connections to the oppressive system within which they live. By producing Bitch Planet, Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro have successfully melded dystopian fiction tropes with feminist theorising. Now all readers have to do is put down the comic, start talking, and turn up their non-compliance.
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Find Bitch Planet at Image Comics: https://imagecomics.com/comics/releases/bitch-planet-vol-1-extraordinary-machine-tp-3.
For women interested in finding out more about comics and other great comics to read, please visit “Beware the Valkyries” at http://bewarethevalkyries.com/. The Valkyries are a global community of women who own or work in comic book stores. Their mission is to help girls and women find their way around the sometimes daunting world of comics.31
This is a lightly revised version of the article that was originally published in 2017 and is available here.
John Stuart Mill, Public and Parliamentary Speeches, Part I, November 1850-November 1868, http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/262 (Toronto: The University of Toronto Press, 2006), and Thomas More, Utopia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014).
Sharon R. Wilson, ed., Women’s Utopian and Dystopian Fiction (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), 1.
Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro, Bitch Planet #1 (Portland: Image Comics, 2014).
In a refreshing plot twist, after teasing Marian Collins, a straight white woman, as the protagonist, this arc establishes an ensemble cast of women of colour as the story’s main characters, led by Kamau Kogo, one of the Black women who risk their lives trying to save Marian.
The word “auxiliary” suggests that the prison world is a secondary, or subsidiary, control mechanism, establishing Earth as the principal site of social control. In this system, Earth is no longer a home world but rather one of two prison worlds.
Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro, Bitch Planet #2 (Portland: Image Comics, 2015).
From the Italian word for “two thousand”, duemila.
Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro, Bitch Planet #2 (Portland: Image Comics, 2015).
Not forgetting: Wentworth (2013-2021), Bad Girls (1999-2006), and Locked Up (2016-2019).
For example: Rollerball (1975), Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (2011), Warcross by Marie Lu (2017), and, more recently, Squid Games (2021).
This is a popular technique within dystopian fictions, and we also see it often in comics. The acclaimed Watchmen comic book series by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons features clippings from psychiatrist and police reports, journal articles, old photographs, and sections from autobiographies. It also mimics the tradition of classified ads in real-world comics too. Such ads would sell worrisome gadgets and potions created to “help” readers secure normatively desirable or ideal bodies—much as the ads in Bitch Planet purport to do.
For example: Lumberjanes (Watters et al., 2014-2020), ODY-C (Fraction and Ward, 2014-present), Y: The Last Man (Vaughan and Guerra, 2002-2008), and The Wicked + The Divine (Gillen and McKelvie, 2014-2019).
Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro, Bitch Planet, Volume 1: Extraordinary Machine (Portland: Image Comics, 2015).
Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1241-1299. https://doi.org/10.2307/1229039.
Most notably perhaps the Combahee River Collective. For further discussion see, for example, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s essay, “Until Black Women Are Free, None of Us Will Be Free: Barbara Smith and the Black feminist visionaries of the Combahee River Collective”, and How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective, a collection of essays and interviews reflecting on the legacy of the Combahee River Collective (also edited by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor).
Avtar Brah, “Difference, Diversity, and Differentiation,” in “Race”, Culture, and Difference, eds. J. Donald and A Rattansi (London: Sage Publications, 2005), 144.
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1999), xvi.
Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro, Bitch Planet #3 (Portland: Image Comics, 2015).
bell hooks, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1989), and Sara Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010).
Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro, Bitch Planet #3 (Portland: Image Comics, 2015).
Sara Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010).
Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro, Bitch Planet #3 (Portland: Image Comics, 2015).
Kelly Sue DeConnick, quoted in Pilot Viruet, “The Revolutionary Non-Compliance of Bitch Planet,” Hazlitt, August 5, 2015. https://hazlitt.net/feature/revolutionary-non-compliance-bitch-planet.
Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro, Bitch Planet #3 (Portland: Image Comics, 2015).
Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro, Bitch Planet #5 (Portland: Image Comics, 2015).
Audre Lorde, cited in Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, eds., This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (Watertown: Persephone Press, 1981), 99.
Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro, Bitch Planet #2 (Portland: Image Comics, 2015).
Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. H. Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009).
Bitch Media closed in June 2022. See, https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/were-saying-goodbye.
“Beware the Valkyries” has now closed, but if you want a great place to start discovering the world of comics, check out npr’s list of 100 comics and graphic novels as well as their more recent “Books We Love” section.