They’re not your typical band of high fantasy adventurers: Hannah the Rockabilly Elven Mage, Violet the Hipster Dwarven Fighter, Dee the Atheist Human Cleric, and Betty the Hippy Hafling Thief. These women are the stars of the new Image Comics/Shadowline series RAT QUEENS, and they’re the deadliest grog-guzzling, death-dealing, battle-maidens-for-hire in Palisade.
In this new series by Kurtis J. Wiebe (PETER PANZERFAUST) and Roc Upchurch, starting in September, 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,” said writer Wiebe, who collaborated with Meg Dejmal to round out his characters 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.”
Wiebe met his collaborator on RAT QUEENS, Roc Upchurch at Comic-Con in 2011.
“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, who has previously drawn the Image series VESCELL, written by Enrique Carrion. “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.”
A RAT QUEENS webcomic by Wiebe, Dejmal, and Upchurch will run each week on the Image Comics tumblr until the release of the first issue on September 25.
Marc
Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….
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