[Book Review] Rat Queens Deluxe Hardcover Volume 1

Rat Queens Deluxe Hardcover Volume 1 / Kurtis J. Wiebe, Roc Upchrurch (ill), and Stjepan Sejic (ill) (Powell's Books)

Have you read Rat Queens?  Why the hell not?  Seriously, stop reading this review and go find a copy to read right now.

Rat Queens Deluxe Hardcover collects the first two trade paperbacks of Rat Queens, Sass and Sorcery (Volume 1) and The Far Reaching Tentacles of N'rygoth (Volume 2) into a single set (I'm assuming the whole hardcover bit lacks any need for further explanation).

Now, I wasn't unaware of Rat Queens, but for the sake of my wallet I actually try to avoid the comic store beyond picking up my limited (and slowly growing) comic pulls.  So I skirted reading it.  Then I came across this blurb:
"This modern spin on an old school genre is a violent monster-killing epic that reads like Buffy meets Tank Girl in a Lord of the Rings world on crack!"
Where can I sign up for this?


I don't even know where to start on this review. I'm kind of incoherent with unashamed fangirlish squeals of glee.

Have some Orc Dave with his magical happy beardbirds to represent how happy I am with this comic.  That's right, I'm beardbirds happy and I don't even like facial hair.
Rat Queens is one of the best rollicking adventures of mayhem I've read, and there are so many little details in there that I absolutely love.  If I was to share snippets of my "favorite" parts there'd be nearly one image for every page.  Absolutely amazing comic.  I WILL be avidly following this series.

My only issue with the description that sucked me in is they forgot to mention Lovecraft/tentacles.  I mean, one of the characters was raised by magical squid worshiping cultists (apparently this makes the holidays complicated), so tentacles and squid monsters are definitely a thing here.

The Rat Queens are something of fuck-ups and misfits, like the best of adventurers.  They're damn good at what they do, but resting on their laurels has led to too much leisure time, too much drink, and leaving swaths of destruction through the city they call home.  Bar crawls involving teams of adventurers seem to play hell on property values.

So it's pretty much business as usual that finds several teams of adventurers sobering up in the city jail before they are assigned punishment duty and sent out to their tasks (latrine duty, goblin clearing, etc).  Assassins lying in wait, however, is NOT business as usual.

Figuring out who's behind this may be the key to the Rat Queen's survival, and that of their friends.  It seems you can't get away from the past, and sometimes the past has tentacles.

Advance Reader Copy courtesy of Image Comics in exchange for an honest review; changes may exist between galley and the final edition.

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