Rat Queens 4: High Fantasies By Kurtis Wiebe Art by Owen Gieni

  Rat Queens 4: High Fantasies

By Kurtis Wiebe

Art by Owen Gieni

So back in 2015 I literally tripped over a fantasy comic book called the Rat Queens, starring an all female group of adventurers who fought hard and partied harder.  Each of the characters was an interesting hot mess of emotions and problems but the fact that they were always there for each other gave them a human air (I say with really only one member of the group being human) that made them sympathetic.  The books also managed to keep their sense of humor for the most part while tackling some rather good storylines.  Then, things went a bit pear shaped, by the end of volume 3 the creator of the book Kurtis Wiebe had declared the book on hiatus and it seemed that Rat Queens was going to join the long list of comics that have a good start but quietly slip away into cancellation (much like the Fell's Five D&D comic that IDW still needs to be brought back, not letting that go!).  Well, it seems that Mr. Wiebe was able to get things sorted out enough to restart the comic this year with the fourth graphic novel being released in October of 2017.  I discussed Mr. Wiebe in my first review of the Rat Queens back in October of 2015 so I'm not retreading that ground.  Mr. Gieni who takes over the art duties in this book is known for his work on Manifest Destiny (a comic series where Lewis and Clark run into monsters while exploring America) and Shutter (a comic about a woman explorer confronting some family secrets).  Mr. Gieni's art is a bit heavy and somewhat paler in it's color choices than the previous artists but the art is actually pretty nice.  Now on to the book.

First let me reintroduce our characters as it has been about a year since I spoke about this.  The Rat Queens are led by Violet, a dwarven fighter and sort-of tactician.  Aiding her as the voice of reason is Dee, the human cleric who is dealing with the fact that her gods might actually be real. Betty the always cheerful smidgen (aka Hobbit) stoner and thief serves as the emotional support of the group.   Hannah, a  half elf/ half demon sorceress is the bad influence of the group; she remains steadfast in her refusal to actually admit that she loves and cares for the other members of the group and will always argue for the easy way, especially if it lets her break some rules.  Joining them is Braga the orc barbarian, who is actually fairly even tempered and intelligent especially when discussing the equity of her home. I like the addition of Braga to the group as she's an interesting character in her own right and meshes very well with the team.  Also appearing in this book are family members of the main cast: Gerald, Hannah's step-father and Barrie, Violet's twin brother.  Barrie has founded his own group of adventurers, the Cat Kings (who are male distaff versions of the Rat Queens) mainly to good naturally compete with Violet and screw with her head in the time honored fashion of siblings everywhere.  I mean, if you can't mess with your sibling's heads from time to time, then I have to ask you my readers, what's the bloody point of family?  Although frankly I think Barrie made a mistake in naming his team the Cat Kings, I mean Dog Brothers was right there and creates a more opposing feel than Cat Kings, which honestly just feels lazy as a name.  

This is a soft reboot, in that most of the preceding story-lines happened and are directly referenced in the story but a lot of the stuff that was left hanging at the end of book III is simply resolved with no further discussion.  For example Hannah is back with the group, with no real explanation of how she escaped the magical prison she was trapped in at the close of volume III.  In fact the events of volume III seemed to have been quietly swept under the rug.  Palisade, their home town and base is still in ruins from the events of Volume II and worse there's a sky-squid-worshipping cult that is using violence to prevent rebuilding.  Other adventurer teams have scattered or abandoned the town (with even one of my favorite supporting group the Dave's breaking up.  Which is completely awful news).  This changes the dynamic in the town completely leaving the Rat Queens (and Barrie's Cat Kings) the only game in town.  At least until the Chorus, the shiney church-sanctioned cult hunter group shows up.  I'm going to hold off discussing them right now because they really only show up for a couple pages and don't impact the story, hopefully we make it to Volume 4 and I can discuss them at that point.

Speaking of the story, there is no connecting larger plot for this volume.  In fact it feels more of a setting the status quo for the new series of Rat Queens then anything else and frankly the book does suffer for that.  There's also a lot of setup being done here, with confrontations being set up between members of the Rat Queens and the cult, the chorus, and others but no real pay off.  Instead the book doubles down on the humor, which is fine but leaves it a bit unbalance without a good plot to offset it. So it feels kinda like the book is treading water before actually diving into anything.  This might be unfair as my judgment is very affected by the fact that I wanted to see the resolution of the story set up in Volume III take place on screen rather than being brought in afterwards and told everything is fine.  That said the book does take some time to let us see Barrie and Violet's relationship and a bit of Hannah and Gerald’s, which is fun and to fair, well done.  On the flip side I feel like the Cat Kings would have worked better if the writer was taking them a little more seriously.   In the end the book is fun and serviceable but bluntly after the last three books, I know that Mr. Wiebe can do better and I hope as he gets back into the groove that he does.  As it stands, I'm a bit sad to give Rat Queens Volume 4 by Kurtis Weibe and Owen Gieni a C+.  It's better than a lot of books out there but they need to get back to the plot.  

Well join us next week as we get historical with Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates. Keep Reading!