I just read Bitch Planet: Extraordinary Machine and now I want to run through the mall shrieking, “NON-COMPLIANT! NON-COMPLIANT!” at the top of my lungs. This comic is a huge rush and I adored it.

I love comics, but I prefer to binge them rather than read one issue at a time, so I’m a little late to the Bitch Planet party (I was waiting for the first collected volume, which came out in October). The story is a feminist homage to exploitation films that also includes elements of science fiction. Basically, in a future dystopia, all women who are deemed “non-compliant” and who are also considered untreatable are sent to the Auxiliary Compliance Outpost, AKA Bitch Planet. Women can be considered non-compliant for committing acts we think of as crimes – things like murder and theft. But they can also be considered non-compliant if their husbands have affairs (because clearly they drove him to it), if they are too fat, too thin, too loud, too brown, too neuro-atypical…basically anything other than Stepford Barbie can qualify you as non-compliant if the men in your life choose to report you as such.

Needless to say, there are some problems with putting all non-compliant women in one giant prison – namely, they are going to fight back. Volume 1 collects the first five issues of the story. It ends on a cliffhanger and I suspect that my binging days are over and I’ll have to start buying this issue by issue because oh my gosh I love it so much I want to marry it.

Here’s a short list of just a few things I love about this comic. One thing you’ll notice is how often I refer to something being unexpected. This is dystopian science fiction that makes a pointed commentary about our own society. The things that happen are awful and enraging. And yet, the tropes are subverted so often, and with such skill, that you will find yourself laughing out loud with sheer delight.

1. The Form and (Narrative) Function of Bodies.

Almost the first thing you see in Bitch Planet is a lot of naked women. This came as a shock to me – I really thought maybe this series was too hard-core for me until I acclimated. But the wonderful thing about these women is that their bodies are all different and all realistic. The majority of the women are women of color. Some are skinny, some are fat, some are buxom, some not. Their tummies are not toned and their boobs are floppy. Everyone looks real. There are also a lot of visual tricks that critique a voyeuristic attitude towards women instead of supporting it.

There’s a lot of push and pull in the story between people viewing women’s bodies as toys and commodities, and women trying to claim their bodies for their own. In one of the very first panels, a large woman (Penny, one of the main characters) complains that the uniform she’s assigned to is much too small for her. In the ensuing sequence, which is both violent and screamingly funny, there’s a little mini drama between who is the expert on this woman’s body, who controls her body, and who controls her. It’s genius in its economy because it packs a ton of world building, character building, and subtext into just a few panels.

This is probably a good place to talk about the art. It has a great retro feel to it, and a lot of movement, and a commitment to portraying women of difference ages, skin tones, and body types realistically. Artist Valentine De Landro, who is also the co-creator, does a lot of cool visuals that remind me of camera angles. It looks and feels like 1970s cinema. The panels are almost all basic squares and rectangles, but I liked the pacing – most pages go boom, boom boom, panel, panel, panel, so when there’s a large panel it really stops the reader and forces the reader to take in what’s happening.

2. The Ads.

Each issue comes with the most wicked, wonderful back page ads of all time. You know how old comics used to have ads for toys and such? Here you can find non-compliant tattoos, and X Ray specs.

3. Background Mayhem.

One reason I had to read each issue multiple times is because, particularly with the first issue, I had to acclimate a little. I mean, this is not a comic to leave lying around for the kiddies (although theoretically you’d just end up with ragingly feminist, often naked kiddies).

The other reason is that often things are happening in the background of the panel. Sometimes they are sad or awful things. Sometimes they are funny. In at least one case, they are both. In one sequence, our heroine, Kamau, talks to a series of other women while she is jogging. Each conversation ends with the woman she’s talking to falling back and joining in what at first is a fight between one woman and one guard, and ultimately is a full-on riot. All that fighting is taking place silently, in the background. It’s powerful because it matches what the women up at the front of the panel are discussing and it’s funny because it has a mad, Looney Tune, slapstick quality to it, and it’s touching, because all these women are piling on to protect the first woman who got in the fight, and it’s also funny because it’s all happening in the background. It’s another example of the usual tropes being flipped.

4.  In-Your-Face-Feminism

In a way, the theme of the story is just an extension of the pattern of things being flipped. In this society, it’s not desirable to be non-compliant, a phrase which could just as easily be ‘non-conformist’. So one the surface, the theme is “buckle down or you’ll be punished.” But all the women who are compliant seem tragic and pitiable. Our heroines are the ones who refuse to buckle under, who love themselves the way they are, or who dive into an un-winnable fight to protect a woman they’ve never seen before, and the women have riotous celebrations in the showers (it’s an exploitation, woman in prison book, you gotta have showers – where the script is flipped AGAIN). This is an incredibly, ferocious celebratory book even though it’s full of tragedy and suffering. I suspect that at the end of it’s run, even if every single character dies, it will still be celebratory in the sense that it makes the reader feel empowered and proud of who they are.

In an NPR interview, which I highly recommend whether you plan to read Bitch Planet or not, Kelly Sue DeConnick said,

You know, it is not a good thing in the world of this book to be labeled noncompliant — it means you don’t fit, it means you don’t belong, it means you are not good enough, you are not right. And in the real world a number of our readers have really glommed on to that label and kind of taken it on proudly. I believe we are at — over a hundred people have sent us photographs of the “noncompliant” tattoos that they’ve gotten, and the way that they’ve personalized them and what they mean to them.

And a friend of mine, another comic book writer, said something that is so smart that I wish I had said it: He said, “You don’t get that tattoo because you are a fan of something in the book. You get that tattoo because that book is a fan of something in you.” And I think that that encapsulates it so much better than anything that I have been able to construct.

This book is scathing and horrifying and inspiring. Somehow, it’s also still really fun. I spent a lot of time yelling “BOOM! DROP MIC!” I spent a lot of time laughing. I spent a lot of time pumping my fist in the air. I love that it’s not a story about one woman; it’s a story about a lot of women, both in and out of the prison. I love that the women are people.

I’m super worried about them, though. Romance readers beware – bad things happen, and DeConnick has hinted that much worse things might happen. There’s no happy ending guarantee at the end of this ride, but the ride itself sure is fun!