Comic Book Review: Rat Queens Volume One: Sass and Sorcery story by Kurtis J. Wiebe, art by Roc Upchurch
The small city of Palisade has a problem. There are too many mercenary adventurers in one place. Previously, there’d been too many monsters and bandits in the area, and the adventurers had gotten paid for disposing of them. But now there’s not enough work for all of them, and the adventurers are carousing and brawling and smashing up the merchants’ businesses. Tonight has been a particularly bad night.
The adventurers get an ultimatum. Each of the mercenary teams is given a public service task that they have to do pro bono and if they refuse or fail, they are henceforth banished from Palisade. The team we follow is the Rat Queens, who are assigned to clean the goblins out of Hindman Cave (“we just cleaned that place out last month.”) Members of the team are Betty, the smidgeon (little person) rogue (thief, basically) (party person); Dee, the human cleric (who doesn’t believe in the god her people worship but somehow still casts healing spells); Hannah the elf mage (who has a friends with benefits thing going on with head town guard Sawyer) and Violet the dwarf warrior (who was a rebel to her people’s ways before it was cool.)
It turns out that the goblins have not returned to Hindman Cave. Instead the Rat Queens are met by a skilled assassin who’s been briefed on their abilities and weaknesses, and would likely be able to kill them all if he’d been a bit more subtle. Before he can reveal why there’s an assassin, he’s slaughtered by a random encounter troll that had been in the cave and was attracted by the noise.
Our protagonists are able to kill the troll, and return to Palisade to learn that all the assignments were in fact traps. The adventurer population of Palisade has been halved. An anonymous donor had paid for the five assignments to be placed into the job pool, and is behind the assassins. But who?
This fantasy comedy series is set in a Dungeons & Dragons-style adventure world with a few words changed for copyright and trademark purposes.
The “comedy” aspects largely come from the writing being openly self-aware, and the personalities of the characters. The Rat Queens tend to be unpleasant people, self-centered, greedy and somewhat amoral. They bicker frequently and indulge their appetites nearly as frequently. This being the kind of series it is, their opponents are worse.
Good: The world Palisade is in is ethnically diverse and homophobia appears not to be one of the traits of civilized people. (Prejudice between the various fantasy races is still a thing though.) There’s some nice action sequences.
Less good: The characters range from mildly unpleasant to seriously unpleasant. I found it difficult to root for anyone except maybe Braga, the badass orc warrior who’s on a different adventuring team. She’s also mildly unpleasant, but fits a certain character stereotype that makes up for it.
The art’s pretty good, but be forewarned that this series had some problems keeping artists. (And apparently a future volume has a plotline that was so poorly received that the next plotline was devoted to walking it back.)
Content note: Gory violence and plenty of it, extramarital sex, drug use, strong language.
A number of jokes landed, but not enough to make me want to seek out the rest of the series. Recommended for people with a stronger tolerance for unpleasant protagonists in a comedy adventure series.
