Introduction
When I heard about Rat Queens being the next book to read in the Emerald City Comics’ comic book club meeting, I wasn’t sure how to feel about it. But, I was intrigued because my fellow friends in the club described it as a female centered Dungeons and Dragons. If you’re not familiar with that, it’s a very famous tabletop RPG game. It’s famous history has lead to many forms of media like novels, video-games, comics, films and television. I’m not too familiar with Dungeons and Dragons, but I do remember playing a very fun beat’em up game by Capcom for the arcades; It was a very enjoyable game. Dungeons and Dragons has also a variety of influences over the years. But I digress, Rat Queens is written by Kurtis J. Wiebez, which I’m not familiar with his work at all. But it looks like he does a lot of Image titles that I have not read yet. Anyways, this book has gone through a series of artist changes, the first volume goes by Roc Upchurch which he had a domestic violence abuse history with his wife, “ouch!”. Then, the artist was Stjepan Šejić but he had left due to health problems and after that, is Tess Flower which left due to creative differences and some feud about Upchurch returning which never claimed to be true and now the series’ art is by Owen Gun. I’m not familiar with any of artists’ works either, but I thought about giving you a brief history of this series’ artist changes. Anyways, I want to let you know I very much enjoyed this volume a lot. It reminds me very much like the show, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Mainly, because the characters are very dislikable people who are carefree and that have vulgar attitudes and also do lots of drinking and drugs. So, I hope you will have fun reading this review and hopefully I will convince you enough to check this series out.
Story
In the town of Palisade, groups of people from the town have been killed while doing their quest day jobs and now it’s up to the Rat Queens to solve the latest mystery.
The Good
Rat Queens turned out to be an enjoyable book. The characters are really interesting and you get to know a lot about them across the five issues. The first character I will discuss is Betty, she is a very heartwarming woman, she can sometimes be a little dirty. But she’s a sweet girl even though she like sweets herself, like candy. She also loves to drink and have “magic” mushrooms. She has an awkward feeling to her and I can see many LGBT people be proud of this character. I really love her attitude and she became my favorite character in this book. Next up is Dee, (Funny, there’s a character with that name in Always Sunny in Philadelphia.) her family believes in a giant flying squid (laughs) which, she finds ridiculous and makes her into an atheist. But, I wouldn’t call her a full blown atheist because she still holds onto hope of finding God and struggles with it everyday. She kind of reminds me of my younger self of finding God. Besides that, she really tries her hardest and leaps forward to heal others when they are in danger. There’s also Hannah, she seems to be the hard-ass in the group and to me she’s very funny. She’s also very aggressive and is currently dating Sawyer. Lastly, there’s Violet, another favorite of mine. She has a very sarcastic attitude, she believes having a beard doesn’t downgrade her femininity and she loves to flaunt her sexual-ness. These are the two things I love the most about her. By the way, I want to you know these women may seem like nice women, but they are very horrible people. They are very vulgar with their words and careless about things that people normally care about. Plus, they love to drink and take drugs. Honestly it’s what makes them great. It really brings the off the wall humor in this book and it’s the reason why I keep stating how much their characteristics are very similar to the characters in Always Sunny in Philadelphia. There is other characters in the book, but not much is known about them and there’s still a mystery to them. So, there isn’t much to say about them. The story is very entertaining too. The main characters are well developed and it enhances the story. The humor interactions are hilariously funny and it had me laughing all the way through. The story also provides interesting clues to the mystery and some background stories to the characters. The action is pretty fun too because you can see how skilled the characters are and they also know how to do great teamwork. Each character holds their own skill or role and they rarely make other characters feel obsolete. This volume really makes the world as something you want to dive into too.
The Bad
The only bad thing I can say about this is the art. There is some great moments especially the face expressions and the beauty of these women. But often times, the art gets very sloppy and off-detailed. There’s many panels with stick figure like art. So, I’m not very much of a fan of Upchurch’s art. It makes me not care much when he gets replaced in the later volumes. But at least he can draw some nice gut gushing scenes and it adds some goring depth to action as well. The artist just doesn’t stand out as much and isn’t really memorable.
Theme
The theme of this volume, I believe is redemption. Because the town, especially the Rat Queens was always screwing things around to each other. They never had any punishment for their wrongdoings not matter how many times they were done. They would also act foolish, immature or do whatever they pleased. They had no idea the dealings they have done would have consequences. I say this because mostly in the beginning, they were doing whatever they want and soon as they saw people getting killed or hurt especially one of their own. It made them quickly realized that it was their fault and they managed to make up for it by saving the town. Each Rat Queen even decided to makeup for things they failed at like Hannah's respect for the people she cared about, Dee is hoping to believe her faith, Violet, redeeming herself by getting a beard and Betty making up with her ex-girlfriend. Many times in life people don’t realize the consequences of their actions until the people they care about gets hurt. This happens a lot of times especially, when it comes to dealing with gang wars. It’s a never-ending game with the way humans think and that’s the sad part of it.
Conclusion
I give this volume a 9 out of 10. It’s a great series that makes horrible people as very likable characters.What’s also great about these characters is that they are trying to make up for what they’ve done even though they are horrible at it. And like I said before the Rat Queens reminds very much like “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and if you love that show, then you will definitely love this book. The humor is another great highlight of the story because of the vulgar language they use and even some of the situations or actions are so over the top that it may have you laugh on the floor. The only downside to this specific volume is the art. It’s very lacking in some details. But at least the artist makes up for it with some good goring scenes. Hopefully the future artists will turn out to be better for this series than Upchurch’s art style. Overall, I recommend you check this series out if you like horrible people that are very quirky and vulgar at their core and even though they come off as dislikable people, their entertainment can definitely keep you laughing.
