When an image is added to text, the interpretation of that text is far more focused. Interpreting a text is fundamental in literary criticism. Being limited to textual evidence makes it more difficult for the reader to unveil the mood or true intent of the passage. Adding images to the writing guides the reader in the intended direction of the author and illustrator. The image of a character or setting is no longer mysterious and lost within the minds of readers. That is not to say that leaving an author’s work up for interpretation can be a beautiful part of writing as well. Often times, readers relate the text to their own life by taking away themes and aspects they can relate to. This is harder to do when the scene is set through drawings frozen on a page. Comics and images within writing add a different beauty to literature. Because the reader no longer has to wonder what the character’s look like or where the scene is taking place, the reader can focus on smaller details of the story. In Bitch Planet by Kelly Sue DeConnick, images are far more powerful than the words on the page. Bitch Planet is a comic showing scenes from the life of a social outcast. It focuses on facial expressions paired with the conversations to illustrate the story. In one scene on page 187, the main character, Penny, is getting lectured by a woman who seems like her foster mother. The illustrations on the page focus on Penny’s gaze to express guilt, sadness, and finally, anger to hint at past and future events in Penny’s life.

 Penny is drawn sitting down in her foster mother’s lush pink family room. It is evident that Penny does not belong there based on the white family photos and baby pictures. The Greek letters suggesting a sorority background and the red roses in the corner of the room do not fit Penny’s fierce personality. Everything about the first image on page 187 suggests that Penny feels guilty. She is getting lectured about her violent outburst, and the way her foster mother talks to her suggests that this is not the first time they have held the conversation. Guilt in this case is due to the fact that Penny can never seem to fit in anywhere. All of this can be interpreted before the reader sees Penny’s face in the same image. Her gaze ties together the guilt found in the writing and background. Penny is slouching in a chair; head low, while her foster mother is standing tall above her. She has the eye of someone who just got caught red-handed and clearly accepts defeat while she gets lectured. Penny is most likely in the foster home because of her violent past, and het guilt shows that she is really trying to change her ways. 

As Penny’s foster mother continues to lecture her, she puts on rubber gloves and grabs a hairbrush. The strange cleanliness of having on rubber gloves suggests that her foster mother is slightly revolted by Penny’s hair and body type. Her strong figure is shown as she turns to reveal an open back top. Penny’s foster mother wants to change Penny’s behavior, and it is also evident that she wants to change the way she looks. In the middle image on page 187, Penny looks ashamed and full of sadness. She is ashamed of her body type. The end of the foster mother’s lecture is what drives a dagger into Penny’s heart as she says, “I’m sorry that I failed you” (187). It is at the point that Penny’s face is in complete sorrow. Eyelashes hanging low with her eyebrows scrunched mirroring her frown; Penny is on the verge of tears. This particular face is shown in the foreground with the foster mother in the background as if Penny is hiding her sadness. 

Suddenly in the next two images nothing changes about the scene around Penny, but her gaze goes from sorrowful to angry. This sudden change is a representation of Penny’s entire life. This trigger in this particular scene was Penny’s foster mother asking what she should do with Penny’s hair. The duo has been sitting in this room for a while now and the foster mother has been completely oblivious of Penny’s changing emotions. She has kept ranting on and Penny is finally angry. Throughout the story, Penny’s common motivation for not changing has been her grandmother’s words, “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” She says these words under her breath and has returned to the brave, angry woman that she has always been. The two gazes that show this are both close-ups. Penny blinks the tears away and shoots her eyes towards her foster mother. Then she closes her eyes again as if channeling her anger towards one thing.

Gaze is a crucial element in visual texts that creates foreshadowing and can trigger a reader to think critically about certain elements in the text. Kelly Sue DeConnick jumps around to different anecdotes from Penny’s life while keeping the comic at roughly twenty pages. Each scene is a memory from Penny’s life as government officials are interrogating her. Each gaze discussed above creates a different transition in the story as a whole. Penny’s guilt in the first frame represents her constantly being an outcast and breaking rules when she was younger. The sadness staring at the reader in the second frame concludes that Penny felt remorse for what she did in her past. However, there is a reason Penny has not stopped having violent outbursts and that is because of her anger showed at the bottom of the page. Having all of these emotions in one small space is key to connecting the story with the text. When the comic is read from beginning to end, the reader’s subconscious is triggered from the images. There is very little textual evidence suggesting that Penny is a large black adult woman that has lived a life of trouble. In fact at first read, Penny seems like an adolescent with a painful streak of angry outbursts. The images stretch the story from childhood to adulthood, and the story is able to skip crucial moments in her life because Penny’s gaze suggests what was going on in certain times in her life. 
