Bitchfest

So Bitch Planet #2 came out this week. I mentioned last month that I had a feeling that I was going to find the book challenging in a lot of ways and that I was really looking forward to that challenge. The rhetoric in this book is turned up to 11, which I totally love, but it’s also like, a lot.

This month we learned a little bit more about the world of Bitch Planet and our heroine Kam.

Kamau Kogo is our main character. You might remember her from issue #1, as the woman standing in between Marion (who we thought was the lead here) and the guards who beat her to death so that her husband could live happily ever after with his new wife. (Ugh, so gross.) Anyway, now the prison is trying to pin Marion’s murder on Kam, and she’s not taking it.

They do come to her with an offer though. There is some kind of super violent sport in this world, which of course, is manipulated by the Council of Fathers (ick), uses to keep the masses “engaged” and “safely factioned,” which, um, is actually one of my favorite things about sports. (The safe tribalism, not the brainwashing.) So, well, that’s challenge to my belief system #1. But I mean, I’m not into blood sports, except for football, lately.

Anyway, Kam was a pro athlete and Officer Whitney comes to her with the offer to form a team to keep the prisoners engaged. She refuses but reconsiders when several inmates come to her and ask her to.

Basically, I’m hooked, story wise, where as I was hooked concept wise before.

I really love the way the book is put together. Kelly Sue DeConnick’s column in the back explained a lot about how this community is going to work. The feminist essays in the back are actually going to make great primers for people unfamiliar with feminist theory, which I always love. The more people who actually back up their beliefs, the better. This month’s is by Tasha Fierce, and is about how intersectionality might be the cure for, “I’m not a feminist but…”

Which needs to be cured.

Like, yesterday.