Rat Queens Volume 1: Sass & Sorcery

by Kurtis J. Wiebe

[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.