I was thinking about buying Rat Queens: Sass and Sorcery anyway, so I was glad it was part of the Hugo Voters Packet. It’s been having a bit of buzz in online comics circles last year, winning an Eisner Award for best new series, but sadly also for less positive reasons as artist Roc Upchurch was arrested on domestic violence charges, which resulted in him leaving the series. This volume however still has him on art. Very nice art it is too, cartooney but with a computerised, photo-realistic sheen too it.
Storywise this is neither a fantasy story, nor quite a D&D parody, but rather a fantasy that takes D&D tropes and uses them semi-seriously, something I haven’t seen done much before. Combine that with a bunch of cynical, sex and drugs obsessed bad girls and you got the start of something decent. Each of the protagonists has just enough of a personality to be memorable, though it’s very much broad strokes here.
Being very much antisocial types, the Rat Queens, as well as the other adventurers of Palisade, are targeted for assassination by somebody, getting sent on very D&Desque quests to clear out the sort of low level enemies you’d encounter at the start of a campaign. Things escalate quickly and Upchurch is an adherent of the Robert Kirkman school of showing graphic violence. Lots of blood, lots of broken bones and almost snapped off arms…
On the whole this is an enjoyable romp but in hindsight not something I’d want to spent money on to read. It’s not that this is a bad comic, but rather that it’s a bit on the formulaic side. There are hints of something better here though.
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