Bitch Planet Triple Feature 3 Featured Reviews 

“Bitch Planet Triple Feature” #3

By | August 18th, 2017
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

It’s another Triple Feature from the “Bitch Planet” world! While we await issue #11 (which is in production!) with (hopefully) the resolution from the cliffhanger of Issue #10, we have another set of short stories set in the Bitch Planet world, eerily speaking (as they always do) to our current geopolitical climate. The themes in all these stories are of men and women as predator and prey, men and women as subduer and the subdued.

Cover by Valentine De Landro
‘Those People’
Written by Alissa Sarah
Illustratedand Colored by Alec Valerius
Lettered by Clayton Cowles

‘Big Game’
Written, Illustrated, and Colored by Dylan Meconis
Lettered by Clayton Cowles

‘Love, Honor, and Obey’
Written by Kit Cox
Illustrated by Vanesa R. Del Ray
Lettered by Clayton Cowles

DeCONNICK & DE LANDRO PRESENT: THE TRIPLE FEATURE! Back for more?? Three talented teams bring the hot, hot heat to entrenched patriarchy everywhere. New stories from the front lines of BITCH PLANET…and all the backmatter you can handle. 100% Grade-A satire. Funny ’til it hurts.

In ‘Those People’ a mercenary army appears to be hunting something sinister in the woods, something that they are told by their superiors wants them dead at any and all costs. A “bloodthirsty” creature with “almost superhuman strength” – a demon. The mercenaries embrace their charge, believing they are heroes serving justice, fighting off an evil of the likes of Hydra or Walkers…but when the gang bursts down the door of their target, they’re nothing like the classical monsters that live under your bed. In fact, they look purely innocent. But these fighters believe in their mission at all costs, and have the force of law on their side. They press on, with injuries and casualties on both sides. One man returns to his supervising officer, who was shot in the melee, to apologize. The injured claims such amends are not necessary – after all, “you were right to be afraid of those people.”

Our next story, ‘Big Game’ takes a similar plot line (a hunter’s pursuit) – a two man team are on a “recovery mission” in search of a woman who apparently snatched a child right out of someone’s backyard. Of course, a heinous crime – but this isn’t a case of one of those ripped-from-the-headlines stories of a woman desperate for a child just taking one. This woman has her reasons for leaving the family unit – they are not made clear, and that is a deliberate choice. The elder on the team makes his case for returning this woman to whence she came, likening their pursuit to that of pursuing jungle game. In fact, he is in the “business of family reunions” – but this is not one that is welcomed with open arms.

The final in the triptych, ‘Love, Honor, and Obey’ is a film noir-inspired tale of a detective meeting with a prostitute named Betty and her pimp (aptly named “Father” Shiner) to find out how one of Betty’s clients met his end in the midst of their lovemaking. While Betty protests that she was just giving her customer what she wanted (“You see, this one time he told me he didn’t like it when I nagged him about his health…”) and her desire to make him happy, she admits her guilt and her motivation for her actions – love. Unfortunately for Betty, her pleas fall on deaf ears. The detective and Father Shiner conclude that her actions are manslaughter and it’s off with her – literally.

Three distinct stories by three distinct creative teams obviously results in three different art styles, with consistency in the form of letterer Clayton Cowles. Alec Valerius provides a Crayola-style color palate, which appears rather incongruous with the militant tone of the story – colors one expects to see in comics with lighter subject matter. Is this meant as commentary on our fetishization of war games? Perhaps. The mercenaries have a grotesque sort of facial and body style to them – exaggerated body parts (small eyes, overly long noses, large mouths), nothing in proportion to the human face. I’m reminded of the classic Twilight Zone episode “The Eye of the Beholder” where the nurses in the hospital had shrunken eyes and lips, but were considered beautiful (while the patient, a conventional beauty, was the ugly one). The mercenaries see themselves as lawful and beautiful, but they are anything but that characteristic.

Continued below

Dylan Meconis’s ‘Big Game’ art extends the metaphor in the plot of a jungle capture, with a palette of earth tones and greens in the first half of the story, moving in the second half to bland Middle America as the “predator” captures his prey. You think you’re in the heart of the Amazon with these colors and analogies to hunting big game. The elder of the two men has a definite Wilford Brimley feel to his look, with a sinister half smile on his face throughout – echoes of the grandfather or elderly uncle you knew that would offer your Werther’s Originals in one breath but spew all sorts of hate from his lips in the next. While the previous story sticks to very linear panels, we see some circular panels here to emphasize the view through binoculars in the pursuit.

Vanesa Del Rey eschews color completely in ‘Love, Honor and Obey’ to add to the 40s detective film feel, complementing Kit Cox’s period dialogue referencing “dolls” and “dames” beautifully. There’s no shortage of shadows here – this is film noir, after all, not meant to be overtly cheery and happy. Intense, detailed line work render every hair on our characters’ heads and line in their faces with precision – you’re left feeling like you’re watching a Sunday afternoon black and white movie that looks familiar but you just can’t quite remember its name.

Initially, I wasn’t enthusiastic about the “Triple Feature” series, because it was an interruption in our main “Bitch Planet” storyline at a very crucial time. While Kelly Sue and Valentine assure readers that the worlds of “Bitch Planet” and “Triple Feature” do intersect, I’m having trouble seeing this. If there are future Triple Features planned (though I am eager to get back to the primary arc and feel like one more “Triple Feature” will make the concept overkill), I would like to see a more overt connection, like an appearance by a “Bitch Planet” minor character. All that said, I’ve come to enjoy the Triple Features and appreciate them as a way to onboard new fans to the world of Bitch Planet in a low key way as well as keep existing fans engaged. They are stories that need to be told to inspire all of us to resist all the evil -isms.

Final Verdict: 7.7 – One cannot deny the importance of these stories as a piece of artistic political resistance that need to be read far and wide, but as a Bitch Planet fan, it’s also high time we get back to the main story.


Kate Kosturski

Kate Kosturski is your Multiversity social media manager, a librarian by day and a comics geek...well, by day too (and by night). Kate's writing has also been featured at PanelxPanel, Women Write About Comics, and Geeks OUT. She spends her free time spending too much money on Funko POP figures and LEGO, playing with yarn, and rooting for the hapless New York Mets. Follow her on Twitter at @librarian_kate.

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