A mutation in Toxoplasmosis causes menstruating women to turn into ferocious killer wildcats – easily provoked and extremely dangerous. As panic spreads and paranoia takes root, the fate of the world rides on the shoulders of one twelve-year-old-girl.
So Kelly Sue DeConnick, the writer behind Bitch Planet, said on twitter that Chelsea Cain’s Man-Eaters series is “a horror comedy about a girl who thinks she’s a monster and it’s brilliant,” which is the best description I’ve seen of it so far. If you’ve been curious, the graphic novel of the first four issues is here, so now’s a good time to jump in. Keep reading for a review of Man-Eaters Volume 1.
To start with the art, Kate Niemczyk’s pencils and inks with Rachelle Rosenberg’s colors are very eye-catching and fun, with strong outlines, well-defined gradients, and bright colors that really jump off the page. The expressions are fantastic, and the body language is very expressive; one of my favorite panels is Maude’s dad standing with two coffee cups in his hands, looking down somewhat nervously at a murder scene while the bored examiner glances at her notepad, asking how you spell “viscera.”
I think the only thing that comes off a little stiff are the drawings of the giant panthers, but we don’t see them too often, mostly because the country’s taken steps to cut down on giant panther attacks. More on that later.
There’s also “additional interior art” by Lia Miternique, Stella Greenvoss, and Kyle Scanlon, and I’m guessing that’s the fake ads and PR stories that pop up now and then. You can tell they’ve made a study of advertising styles because they’re eerily good: ads for sodas and cleaning products and prescriptions and they all could’ve come straight out of a magazine. The fourth issue is actually an issue of CatFight, a magazine that teaches teenage boys how to be tough and protect themselves from cat attacks and all that nasty, nasty estrogen out there. It’s like every “For Kids” magazine you’ve ever seen, with blatant corporate sponsorship and paranoia ramped up to eleven.
As for the plot, let’s get this out of the way: it’s satire, which is not really meant to be subtle. It’s crazy, over-the-top awful in places, and it’s going to poke a lot of sensitive people right in the eye, because that’s what it’s supposed to do. It’s very similar to Bitch Planet that way. So if you’re super offended at the idea of book where the men are the bad guys and the women are the plucky resistance fighters….honestly, that means you more than anyone should read this book, but if it’s going to ruin your day maybe you should skip it.
But what’s the point of the book? First, it’s a near-future dystopia with shape-changers and snappy dialogue, and that’s always interesting. You can read it just for that and have a good time.
But for deeper meanings, it’s trying to do a lot. (In my opinion anyway: I didn’t have a conversation with the creators, but I think this is what they were going for.)
It’s pointing out how testosterone tends to be applauded and estrogen tends to be made fun of. There’s exceptions to that, but in the real world it feels like testosterone equals aggression equals strength equals heroic, and estrogen equals bleeding equals emotions equals jokes. Menstruation and what it can produce (stronger emotions, bleeding, ability to become pregnant) is often treated as something that’s broken, and not just by men.
I mean, I get it, menstruation and fertility is a pain in the ass sometimes, but women are not broken because it happens, it means everything’s healthy. There’s nothing wrong with getting help with some of the more annoying symptoms (access to pads and tampons, pain relief, contraception if you’re not ready for kids and/or have truly terrible periods) but there’s this persistent idea that having a period makes women inferior and they need to be surgically or chemically “fixed.”
Look at it this way: I’m guessing most guys feel being kicked straight in the balls is pure agony, but I don’t know many guys who’d be into removing their balls, or maybe some complicated surgery to relocate them or drugs to deaden them, etc etc. It’s annoying, but that’s part of their physical makeup and part of being a healthy, fertile man. Nothing wrong with wearing some protection during sports so it doesn’t happen more than it needs to, but men aren’t “broken” because their reproductive organs have that annoying side effect. And women aren’t either.
In the book, the “annoying side-effect” is that young women starting their periods are at risk of turning into crazed panthers that can slaughter their entire family. So steps were taken to drug them and “fix” them. It’s for the public good, everyone’s safer this way, right?
The book’s asking where that line is, between natural and broken. Slaughtering families is obviously over the line. But where is the line where outside forces can step in and fix things? And is media and advertising making that decision for us?
And the book’s not looking just at how women are treated: the Estro-PureTM line of drinks is meant for boys only, because the city water is loaded with estrogen to keep girls from having their periods and possibly turning into killer panthers, but god forbid a boy should drink estrogen, so the book is filled with ad after ad about Estro-PureTM and Estro-PopTM and cleaners and sanitizers to make sure your boy never, ever comes in contact with estrogen.
In the real world of course it’s still a popular idea that men shouldn’t have any “womanly” traits. Many boys are still brought up to believe that the worst thing they can do is anything a girl would do, and men struggling with depression and eating disorders are ridiculed because they’re not being “manly.” The book takes that idea to the absolute extreme, with a whole industry meant to armor-plate boys against the slightest contact with womanly chemicals, while pointing out that advertising and the media is reinforcing ideas about what are good and bad traits for children to have.
(The book also has a nudge and a wink about the idea of a “safe space” for boys. I could get into the whole culture of some individuals calling people “snowflakes” for wanting to make safe spaces, who then turn around and make men-only groups because the internet is being unkind, but who wants to get into that?)
In Man-Eaters, having your period is a sign you’re dangerous, and people are instructed to watch out for any and all signs. There’s that “taken-to-extreme” thing again: in the real world if guys suspect a woman is “hormonal” there’s raised eyebrows and pointed comments. In Man-Eaters there’s calls to the government and swat teams.
But in between all that there’s also likable, realistic characters. Maude’s Mom is a tough-as-nails “SCAT” officer who’s obviously respected and loves her daughter but is realistic enough to know life isn’t always fair. (And oh my goodness I love the names of all her dogs.)
Maude’s Dad is a down-to-earth cop, equal parts smart and goofy, who’s worried about his daughter in the way that all dads are worried about their daughters: that she’ll grow up past the point where he can protect her, and it doesn’t take shape-changing panthers for dads to want to keep their daughters safe.
Four issues in and I’ve still got a lot of questions: what’s going on with people humming all the time? If the disease starts originally from cleaning out cats’ litter boxes, why do any of them still have cats? Once a woman turns into a panther, will she always turn into a panther, or does it eventually stop? And are people actually turning into panthers or is this all a government hoax?
Like Bitch Planet, Man-Eaters looks at a real-world situation and takes it to its absolute, worst-possible, totally-improbable-but-you-never-really-know, outcome. You think women are dangerous on their periods? What if they turned into animals and killed you? You think advertising controls how we view ourselves and others? What if it was a thousand times more obvious?
And that’s partly the point of satire: to take subtle situations and blow them ridiculously out of proportion, because a lot of the time the points we discuss in the real world get microscopically complicated, maybe it’s easier to talk about them if they’re larger than life and stomping around causing carnage. Maybe we need to get terribly offended about a comic book situation so we can calm down a little and talk about a real-world situation. (Or maybe we need to get offended at a comic book situation so we can be more offended about a real-world situation, either way, as long as we’re talking about it.)
Aaaanyway, TL:DR – if you read it and it really offended you, then you were exactly the person the book was trying to talk to, I hope it gave you a few new things to talk about.
If you read it and you agree with all of it, then the book’s just preaching to the choir. But that’s okay, you can just read it because it’s funny and empowering and the art’s really good.
