Rat Queens | [BTW] : Ben Trube, Writer

Hey Ben, did you read anything over vacation you actually liked? As a matter of fact, yes…

Writer – Kurtis J. Weibe, Artist – Roc Upchurch

One might be tempted to classify Rat Queens as a parody of fantasy adventuring stories, but in reality it’s a character-driven exciting world with some familiar tropes. It isn’t a series that takes itself too seriously, but that serves to elevate the more emotional moments when they happen (more in the second volume than this first outing).

As with most Volume 1’s, Sass & Sorcery introduces us to the eponymous Rat Queens: Hannah (a mage), Dee (a healer), Violet (a female dwarf with a shaved beard, their fighter), and Betty (an over-sexed, violent, tiny elf-like thing called a Smidgen). The Queens are a rabble-rousing bunch who’ve gotten in one bar-fight too many, and have been tasked by the town sheriff to take on a quest, or to get their butts out of town. As it turns out this whole thing is just a setup to get the Queens, and a number of other rowdy adventuring troops, all killed. The Queens and remaining survivors of the other groups must track down who’s trying to kill them, while also fighting off a Goblin horde that threatens to destroy the city.

Honorable mention goes to the Vulcan-like Obsidian Darkness whose quest is to clean the toilets in the Winding Pass barracks. Something about this group’s deadpan delivery and complete acceptance of the dirty task made seeing them all killed kind of sad, but in a funny way.

The comic relies a bit heavily on ultra-violence in this early outing, something that tempers as the series goes along, though this is mostly played to comedic effect. Betty skewers a pair of goblin eyes and offers them to Hannah as fresh ingredients. Hannah gets her arm quite realistically crushed by the aforementioned goblin. An assassin is smashed to giblets by a goblin’s hammer. You get the idea.

The final architect of the Rat Queen’s demise is both someone you’d never expect, and yet that makes a certain kind of sense. The comic does a good job of setting up the next arc, providing closure to the events of this volume, while hinting at bigger and multi-legged threats to come.

The character designs are unique and all say something about the individual women that isn’t revealed up front. The dots under Dees eyes may look cool but they mean something too. And what’s with Hannah’s weird hairdo? What does Violet look like with a beard? For answers to these questions you’ll need to read further. Honorable mention also goes to Orc Dave who has blue birds of healing that live in his beard. It looks adorable.

The jokes are funny, there’s effective use of coarse language and in-universe expressions of surprise. The plot is intriguing while still allowing for many character moments and asides. As a first outing this volume is great fun. And it only gets better from here.

(4 Stars | Only because I want you to think the 5 Stars I’m giving Volume 2 actually mean something)