Villordsutch reviews Image Comics’ Rat Queens #2…
“Someone wants to kill the Rat Queens? The girls are seeing red and there’s only one thing to do about it: get really, really drunk. And, eventually, maybe get to the bottom of who’s trying to kill them. Because, let’s be honest, they already know why.”
With an outstanding explosion of blood, bones and foul language the first issue of Rat Queens made me smile so much I was thinking about it for a fair few days after. I was glad that I said “Yes” to reviewing it out of curiosity – just for the fact alone that the comic had given me a well-earned laugh from the great (but rather serious) stories that I had been reading, the type of tales that have the habit of pulling you down to a certain level, just between grief stricken and heartbroken.
However, I did have a concern: “Would I find #2 just as great?” Would Rat Queens #2 turn out to be like that lad in your class who constantly farted on purpose to make the room laugh and the teacher annoyed, and then slowly after ten minutes of this you realise all you’re left with a room full of foul-smelling rectal gas that you can taste in your mouth (which certainly isn’t funny)? So I was hoping that when this second issue arrived I wouldn’t have rectal gas in my mouth, just a big cheesy Cheshire cat grin and a fair few laughs.
We’d just left the rowdy female adventurers with a bloody mess sprayed all over them from the troll squashed assassin (deceased). After a brief but heated fight between the ladies involving a bit of fantasy world racial stereotyping, we are reminded that there is a giant assassin squashing troll both confused and angry; after a fairly gruesome injury to one of our Queens we let our gnomish member unleash a nasty manoeuvre involving two daggers and pair of troll eyes. Meeting up with the other groups of heroes they start to put together who has attempted to send them to their deaths.
Kurtis J. Wiebe is clearly a gamer of some variety, a gamer like myself who doesn’t go in for all the serious gubbins that comes with being the best geared, most gold, best mount owning hard arse and is more than happy to scream “Lerooooy Jenkinsssss!” for the 25th time in the same raid group and in turn causing the 25th wipe. His conversation given to the Queens about having no gold left for repairs was fantastic, and the drunk conversation where one other our rather sozzled ladies breaks out into laughter mid-argument reduced me to giggling like an idiot. Don’t get me wrong though, this comic isn’t all about shits’n’giggles – there is a story running through this which seems to be unfolding perfectly in each issue; it’s not brain battering but it’s definitely there.
Turning finally to the art of Roc Upchurch, it sings so much of the D&D comic world you really could be mistaken for what you’re picking up initially, but the amount of enemies being split in two rather graphically along with eye ball stabbing and perhaps the words, “…with the creative imagination of a donkey’s cock…” in the first panel might turn away the serious D&D’ers. Throughout this entire issue Roc Upchurch shows his love of his work and the source material from which it came, yet he has made it his own as each panel looks brilliant, gruesome and beautiful.
If you’re lucky you could possibly still get your hands on #1 of Rat Queens. I’d really recommend getting that when you pick up issue #2. Image Comics you’ve got something wonderful on your hands here.
Villordsutch likes his sci-fi and looks like a tubby Viking according to his children. Visit his website and follow him on Twitter.
Originally published October 25, 2013. Updated April 13, 2018.
