Rat Queens Volume 1: Sass & Sorcery

by Kurtis J. Wiebe

Roc Upchurch (Artist)

• Who are the Rat Queens? A pack of booze-guzzling, death-dealing battle
  maidens-for-hire, and they're in the business of killing all god's creatures for
  profit. It's also a darkly comedic sass-and-sorcery series starring Hannah the
  Rockabilly Elven Mage, Violet the Hipster Dwarven Fighter, Dee the Atheist Human
  Cleric and Betty the Hippy Smidgen Thief. This modern spin on an old school
  genre is a violent monster-killing epic that is like Buffy meets Tank Girl in a
  Lord of the Rings world on crack!
• Collecting the first five issues of the sold-out hit series at the special
  introductory price of $9.99!

• ISBN10: 1607069458
• ISBN13: 9781607069454
• Publish Date: 8 April 2014
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Image Comics
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 128
• Language: English

Reviews

[leahrosereads]

5 Stars for some kick ass broads, nostalgia of D&D, and some major brutality. If I wasn't a fan girl of all of that, this would probably be closer to a 3.5 or 4 star trade, for the simple fact that the story/plot is all over the place and there's gaps galore.

But the gals, and the art, and the blood and gore make up for all of that! I picked this up through my library, but I'm sure they'll be hitting my bookshelves soon in a more permanent capacity.


I'm going to buy them...that's what I'm trying to say here.

[pamela]

Crude, violent, irreverent and utterly hilarious! what took me so long to read these???

[Hillary]

I remember when I first heard of the title, I forget which blog It was that I first saw It on, I was admittedly put off by the title. I mean how can a rat be a queen? After hearing many good things about It, I decided to get It from the library. I was relieved to see that the queens were like elves and such and not actual rats.

I LOVE fantasy and sci-fi so Imagine my surprise when I opened up the comic and saw that It was a fantasy comic. I am a heavy gamer of World of Warcraft, so this comic felt like home to me.  The artwork was spectacular. I was reading comics on my Kindle but I decided that I would rather have a dead tree book so I could appreciate the artwork more. This comic I was blown away by the artwork In It. It was so real life like and colourful. The artist even got the elves and dwarves drawing right.

In every universe, there Is Its own set of rules and how magic and stuff works. I am REALLY picky because I have been reading fantasy since I was a teen. And I have certain expectations of how a universe should work. You can't just come In and make up stuff as you go along. There are certain laws and stuff that you have to follow. True, there Is leeway on HOW an author can set It up or otherwise there would be millions of books with the same plot but still there are limitations. This comic passed the believable test. Everything that happened fit In with the laws of fantasy and there was no poof and you are out of danger.

There Is violence and sex (there Is even an orgy scene!) In It so If you are adverse to that kind of thing then you best steer clear of this comic. I was all like whaaaaaaa???? when I saw the orgy of all different races In the book. I mean we earthlings can't even get along with our fellow humans, and here we are with elves and dwarves and such all...doing It. It wasn't TOO graphic so your eyes are not assaulted but just enough that you can guess what Is really happening.

It followed the usual plot of fighting dragons and getting power-ups and such. There was not groundbreaking stuff In volume one. However, the spectacular artwork more than made up for this flaw. I am looking forward to getting volume 2 to see where the creators go with this universe.This review was originally posted on Adventures in Never Never Land

[inlibrisveritas]

4.5 Stars

I’ve been curious about Rat Queen since I first saw them on the ‘new releases’ shelf at my local comic book store, but I for some reason I never picked them up. Now I’m in the middle of regretting that decision and I plan to add this to my monthly list.

Rat Queens is set in a fantasy world that is reminiscent of an MMO or an RP game, it has all the same visual charm and similarities but it also has that added snark thanks to the ‘players’ or in this case characters. The Rat Queens is a group of 4 women who go on adventures, kick ass, and cause trouble…which is exactly what they are doing in the first issue. They drink, they curse, and they are not afraid to go toe to toe with anyone. As you can see from the characters description in the summary these woman are not easily pushed into a single category. Hannah is an Elven Mage with serious attitude and a penchant for causing trouble, Violet is a Dwarven fighter who doesn’t like being grouped with the mainstream so she’s shaved off her beard and only drinks wine, Dee is a cleric who doesn’t believe in the religion she supposedly draws power from and she fails at being social, and then there is Betty the smidgen who is incredibly adorable, loves candy, mushrooms and sex….It’s an odd group, but they are hilarious.

In fact the humor is one of the major selling points for this. The humor ranges between outright snarky to dark, with a few awkward induced chuckles in between. The story is actually pretty good and even held some surprisingly deep elements like romance, finding who you are, and being comfortable in your decisions. These first five issues give you a fantastic taste for what’s to come in future issues of Rat Queens. We see the start of some great character development, a few budding romances, and an overall plot that starts off sort of silly but promises to be something pretty fun and epic.

Overall I’m really happy that I decided to request this for review and I can’t wait to start reading farther into the series! If you like funny adventures with a lot of sass then Rat Queens has you covered.