Decentering the sexual aggressor: sexual violence, trigger warnings and Bitch Planet

ABSTRACT

Bitch Planet, a feminist satire of exploitation comics and films by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro, explicitly subverts this traditional comic book paradigm throughout its run, but nowhere more assertively than in issue #6, which begins with a trigger warning exhorting the reader to assess her comfort level with the upcoming flashback story that will address sexual violence. This page de-centres the aggressor, instead positioning the survivor of sexual violence at the centre of the comic reading experience. Using trauma theory and the existing body of work on ‘fridged’ women in comics, as well as reflecting on the history of the trigger warning as it has been used in comics to this point, we argue that issue #6 represents a significant shift in the way comics approach marginalized readers, even given the difficulties of presenting ‘warnings’ within the context of mainstream comics art.

KEYWORDS:

• Kelly Sue DeConnick
• Valentine De Landro
• Bitch Planet
• sexual assault
• trigger warnings
• exploitation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. De Landro is not the artist on this issue (that is guest penciller Taki Soma, brought to the comic to ensure Meiko’s story was at least partially told by a Japanese-American woman), but where the argument is larger than the layout of this individual issue we credit him because he is a co-creator of the series.

2. The discussion of this phenomenon in comics discourse is wide-ranging. At Comics Forum in 2015, Kim Barker argued that the tattoos represent a misreading of this concept within the comic; in other words, that to identify by matching tattoos was indeed an act of compliance, not an act of non-compliance. The Mary Sue (2015), conversely, has collected something of an auto-ethnography of women who have branded themselves with this mark, and the diversity of stories seems to resist a simple explanation beyond the popularity of, and evident necessity for, a communal symbol of pop culture feminism.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Brenna Clarke Gray

Brenna Clarke Gray is a faculty member in the English Department at Douglas College, where she recently served as the Coordinator of Associate of Arts Degrees. Recent publications include work on the labour of comics production, Canadian superheroes such as Scott Pilgrim and the Alpha Flight team, and a brief history of Canadian comic books.

David N. Wright

David N. Wright is a faculty member of the English Department and leads the Digital Cultures Lab at Douglas College in New Westminster, BC, Canada. His current research and teaching emphasises the role critical thinking and close reading has in understanding, using and building digital tools and emerging technologies.