What do you get when you band together battle-maidens-for-hire Hannah the Rockabilly Elven Mage, Violet the Hipster Dwarven Fighter, Dee the Atheist Human Cleric, and Betty the Hippy Hafling Thief? A new comedy adventure series for Image Comics/Shadowline by Kurtis J. Wiebe (Peter Panzerfaust) called Rat Queens which features lots of booze and brawls.
The Rat Queens are taking on the quest of a lifetime... or at least the quest that’s going to get them out of the latest jam they’ve found themselves in: clearing out some pesky goblins from a cave. But these aren’t just any goblins, and Hindman Cave isn’t just any cave.
“I suppose it’s obvious at this point that this is a love letter to my years of Dungeons and Dragons and fantasy but tweaked ever so slightly with a modern twist,” stated Kurtis J. Wiebe in an interview with IGN. “Rat Queens is a title I’m super excited about. This is a series I’ve wanted to write for years but never felt quite ready to do it.” The writer collaborated with Meg Dejmal to better develop the characters as well as artist Roc Upchurch.
“A fantasy setting with female leads is pretty much the dream for me, so I'm having the time of my life with Rat Queens,” said Upchurch (Vescell) who met Wiebe at Comic-Con 2011. “Creating these characters was both fun and challenging. The girls have very different personalities, so I wanted them to have very distinct and unique costumes to reflect that. The world itself is so fun to draw. I want this to be a place that fans of fantasy would want to live in with characters that they would want adventures with.”
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A weekly webcomic will run each week on the Image Comics tumblr until the release of the first issue. Rat Queens #1 which arrives on September 25, 2013 includes a special variant edition with a cover by Saga artist Fiona Staples and can be pre-ordered now from the July issue of Previews.