Kelly Sue DeConnick's Bitch Planet Coming From Image

Fan-favorite writer Kelly Sue DeConnick will follow up her Pretty Deadly at Image Comics with Bitch Planet, she revealed today at Image Expo. The title will feature art by Valentine De Landro. "This is born of a deep and abiding love for exploitation and women in prison movies of the 1960s and 1970s," DeConnick said. "I like this stuff so much, and it's so terrible. It's so deeply awful and delicious, like those candies that are bad for you." "I have a profound and abiding love for exploitation films, but as a feminist, I also find many (if not most) of them deeply problematic—for reasons that are both obvious and that I can't expound on without sounding like an academic paper," said DeConnick. "These are two WILDLY mixed feelings. And I love mixed feelings. It happens that mixed feelings are the perfect soil composition for fiction."

"Kelly Sue pretty much sold me on this with the title. It's called Bitch Planet—how can you not love that?" said Eric Stephenson, Publisher at Image Comics. "But seriously, it's a true pleasure to have Kelly Sue working on a second title at Image, and even better that she's doing it with Valentine De Landro. Mark my words, this is your new favorite comic." A science-fiction take on the Women in Prison exploitation feature, Bitch Planet follows five prisoners on an all-female penal planet, ready to make their escape by way of a gladiatorial exhibition against a team of visiting male prisoners. DeConnick summed Bitch Planet up with, "there are five women, all ridiculous and real, and all very different. One shouldn't be there. The other four are unrepentant and guilty as Hell." DeConnick told the audience that she wanted to try to play up what she loved about the genre, while also confronting the things about it that were problematic. "How do I do the obligatory shower scene?"She joked. Expect the title to be released in the summer or fall 2014.