Author: Kurtis J Wiebe
Publisher: Image Comics
Rating: WORTHY!
Illustrated by Roc Upchurch and Stjepan Šejić.
Erratum:
"It'd still be in tact..." should be "It'd still be intact..." (page 14 Adobe Digital Edition).
I automatically feel nauseous whenever I read a fantasy story which has random apostrophes appearing in words. The last word in the title of this one sounds like Henry Goth! It's larded with stock fantasy phrases like "the Haruspex Requiem", and "the Glyph of Furlough", and "the abyssal plain". Newsflash: an abyss ain't a plain. But the blurb sounded interesting, so I thought, "Let's run it up the reader and see if it's worth saluting."
The funny thing is that it actually turned out to be the most engaging comic I've read since iZombie. Despite the trope and cliché here and there, it has such a modern feel to it without losing anything of its medieval setting. I am definitely going to buy the graphic novel series for this.
According to the images on page six, the Rat Queen team evidently conduct their work using a broadsword, a Harry Potter style wand dripping lightning, a dead squid, and some interesting looking mushrooms. They also play in a girl band according to one wild image, but I suspected that that was for sheer fun. It did endear me to the artist, however.
So this looks interesting so far, thinks I. The 'drummer", Betty, is a lesbian pixie or halfling, the "lead guitarist", Hannah, is a hetero elf, the singer, Delilah (Dee) is a lonely human witch, and god only knows what the bass-playing red-headed child Violet (Vi) is into. She's a dwarf, but she shaved her beard before it became fashionable to do so. Yes, this is fantasy, but it has a far more modern look to it than most fantasy you'll encounter involving trolls, orcs, and elves, etc.
This novel has so much attitude that it drips off the page. Immediately after we meet them, the girls are already in trouble for an unscheduled penectomy they performed on a large statue outside the town hall. But they're not dressed down for it. In fact, they dress quite well. Instead they're hired to go after some animated mushrooms. Next we're off to meet Lola and Sawyer, who are another trip. They're the local cops or whatever the equivalent was back then, and I love Lola's attitude. She has some of the best come-backs in the whole book.
"Dimensional demons that feed on the energy of displaced reality" sounds suspiciously like the MO of the weeping angels of Doctor Who fame. Except that these beasties aren't statues, they're squid - and squid out of water at that. How does that even work? And don't get me started on their mouths (please!), which look disturbingly like vulvas.
So, in short, I loved this graphic novel. The art work was really good, and the coloring was great. The images make full use of the page, so it's tree-friendly for the print version (as far as print versions can be tree friendly, that is!). I recommend it all the way.
