Review of "Bitch Planet #2," comic by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro

 Review of

Bitch Planet #2, comic by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro

Five out of five stars

 Another bizarre dystopia where “noncompliant” females are sent “elsewhere”

 The story opens with the location being Earth with some form of catered cocktail party in progress. The first scene of the party shows what appears to be all men in suits with women in short dresses walking though carrying trays of refreshments. The speaker at the podium is engaged in an extended statement about creating another us versus them scenario. He closes with a classic profiting from misery statement, “To peace my friends . . . and God bless the bloodthirsty rites that help us to keep it.”

 In this dystopia, noncompliant females are sent to an off-Earth location formally called “A. C. O.,” but known colloquially as “Bitch Planet.” The next location after the cocktail party is a closed room where a single woman is being bombarded by visual and aural messages demanding that she issue a confession for a murder.

 When the woman shows some serious fight, her overseers express their approval, and she is recruited to fight other woman in some kind of arena. She is asked by other women to form a team that would be known as Megaton Team. The process is a strange one, with seeming relentless sensory bombardment. At the end, it is all about the video engagement metrics.

 This is a very dark comic; women are largely depicted as simple vessels to be used by the white men in suits to achieve their entertainment and economic ends. While opportunities for freedom are dangled, it is clear that very few women will ever achieve that. Like the gladiators of ancient Rome, the successful ones are forced to fight until they encounter someone that is either lucky or has more skills.