Rat Queens #8

This time we are going to look at issue eight of another one of my favorite newer titles, Rat Queens. This book is written by Kurtis J. Wiebe with art and colors by Roc Upchurch, and it’s another of the Image books under that company’s Shadowline imprint.

As I said this is issue eight, so many characters have already beem established. There is an elven mage named Hannah, who is your typical rocker elf, a human cleric named Dee who comes from a Cthulhu-esque cult, Violet the dwarf who shaved her beard and finally, my favorite character, the Halfling Betty, creator of the Betty, a cocktail consisting of vodka, tequila, and two magic mushrooms.

The girls make up a basic team used in any fantasy role-playing game: a “tank,” a magic user, a thief/light attacker and a healer. The comic itself is also set in your basic fantasy RPG world, where teams, the Rat Queens, the Four Daves, Peaches etc, all with the same four basic people in them. Basically this is a book about a group of people questing. The magic of Rat Queens is that it’s light and fun while also telling amazing and gripping stories. One of the things I love most about this book is the fact that they could zoom away from this world and show a group of four girls playing Dungeons & Dragons around a table and I wouldn’t be surprised or disappointed.

This issue is in the middle of the current arc and focuses on the back story of Violet the Dwarf, a woman who is fed up with her family, her station, and her beard. It shows her interactions with her father, how the dwarf kingdoms work, and how she finally decides to shave her beard.

This issue, like the entire series so far, was 10 out of 10. Like Manifest Destiny and The Walking Dead, this is one of the best books coming out today, and it’s coming straight out of Image Comics, a company quickly becoming what Vertigo once was—a home for creator owned books that tell amazing stories on a regular basis. The art was awesome as always and the writing has never dipped. The only downside to this issue was the fact that it took two months to come out, and that it’ll be another month until I get another issue!