

Warm colors are typically associated with positive feelings sentiment towards something while cool colors commonly represent the opposite.  More specifically, in the story Bitch Planet, the color orange plays a significant role in portraying the mood of the particular scene. In various instances throughout the story where orange is present, it plays a significant role in displaying how, the main character, Penny feels or acts in her particular situation.  For example, on pages 176 the color orange has a large presence and significance that we discover towards the end of the graphic novel.  Similarly, on pages 179-182, we can see how the presence of orange matched the change in sentiment throughout the memory that Penny had with her Grandmother.

On Page 176, arguably the most crucial opening panel, we see Penny standing tall in front of a large glass window.  She has a wide stance with fists clenched almost as if she is preparing for a fight.  Armed guards stand behind her, ready to detain her if necessary. She is wearing a large orange jumpsuit that covers the majority of her body but doesn’t cover a large tattoo on her left arm. The size of Penny, on the panel, consumes the majority of the page almost striking fear into the reader.  Surrounding her are only cool colors such as blue, purple, and black leaving the orange jumpsuit to jump off of the page at the reader.

On this page there is only one thing that is orange and that is Penny’s large jumpsuit.  Towards the end of the novel we see that Penny sees that the way she is, is her true identity and her ideal form of herself.  The author can be hinting at this by making penny’s jumpsuit the only warm colored object on the opening panel.  By using the color orange, Kelley Sue DeConnick allows penny to stand out from her surroundings; similar to the way she stands out as a person.  Penny has features that would go against the ideals of some social norms.  For example, Penny’s hairstyle may be considered outside of social norms because it is not a full head of hair and half of it is shaved off.  Also, a stereotypical woman is not a woman of her size.  The combination of all of these traits make Penny stand out as a person and it is what the fathers want to change.  From the moment they took her into their custody they wanted her to change and be the ideal woman that society wants.

The next series of panels, on pages 179-182 contain Penny’s memory of the day police raided her grandmother’s house and took her away.  The Panels begin on page 179 where a young penny and her grandmother are baking in the kitchen.  The scene begins with a large shot of penny and her grandmother enjoying themselves together.  The kitchen mainly contains different shades of orange in the background on the cabinets and is the color of the walls.  As the scene progressed Penny began to struggle with the batter she was mixing because she got her hair got stuck in it and it created a huge mess. The mess got bigger and DeConnick used darker colors providing larger and more intense shadows.  Eventually, Penny’s grandmother’s dog began to bark and as her grandmother went over to see what was wrong she noticed that there was a large group of armed men headed for her front door in a hurry. In this final panel the shadows are very dark and intense and the presence of warm colors has become much less apparent.

In the very beginning the mood is displayed as very playful and welcome.  DeConnick uses the color orange with very little cool colors to help portray the positive mood.  Throughout the flashback, much like on the final panel on page 181, DeConnick began to use black to foreshadow the immediate change in mood that was about to come.  The warm colors that were used in the first few panels of the flashback were used to allude to the welcoming and playful nature of the particular scene.  The darker shadows were used to refer to the change in mood that was to come when the police arrived at the house.  Also, by the end of the flashback, there was very little orange left and what did remain was in the process of being consumed by the darkness and shadows to accompany the decline in mood.

I would like to argue that the color of each illustration, whether cool or warm colors, was directly associated with the mood of a particular scene.  In comparison to cool colors the color orange was only present when the overall mood was a positive one and cool colors were only present when the mood was a negative one.  The color orange tends to change in an indirect relation with cool colors. Through the beginning, in the first panels, when the presence of orange was almost nonexistent the mood was negative and vice versa.  The color orange presents its strongest meaning in the final panels on pages 198 and 199.  In these panels Penny is hooked up to the mirror that is supposed to display the ideal version of herself.  The guards that strap her down to the table and place her in front of the mirror are covered in black and don’t have much depth and detail to them.  As a result, their identity is vague and they do not stand out in a crowd.  On the other hand, Penny is still in her large orange jumpsuit and has very defined features allowing her to standout quite easily.  This relates to what is happening in this scene because this is when Penny discovers that who she is now is the ideal version of herself.  Therefore, much like the way she stands out in the graphic novel, the color orange allows her to stand out from all the fathers on the screens and from the guards dressed completely in black.