Women Who Stab Things

I love Rat Queens.

That’s not the line I wanted to open with for this particular blog post.

I wanted to tell you I was going to come to here to tell you what an important comic Rat Queens, written by Kurtis J. Wiebe and drawn by Johnny Rocwell, was.  I wanted to illustrate in no uncertain terms just how many daring leaps this story has taken and just how important that is to the growth of fantasy as a genre.  I wanted to tell you all about how this was a comic that so thoroughly rejects the baggage of fantasy tropes while so vigorously embracing their delight that it simply demands to be read.

I wanted to tell you this in a very studious, academic manner that lent itself to thoroughly serious discussion.

As you can guess, I failed at that.

 

Rat Queens is awesome.  Simply, unabashedly, vigorously, humanly, tenderly, bad-assingly awesome.

A glimpse at its story should be easy enough to tell why I like it so much.  An adventuring party of an Elf Wizard, a Dwarf Warrior, a Human Cleric and a Smidgen (Halfling) Rogue have to deal with the troubles of being adventurers.  Said troubles include living large off of ill-gotten gains, causing fistfights, having sex with orcs and being general nuisances to society, oft-looked-down-upon by the authorities and probably loathed by one or more supernatural powers.

The characters are so amazingly vivid.  Hannah is a Wizard dealing with living up to the legacy of her parents and her people, Violet is a Dwarf who has rejected her society outright, Dee is a Cleric who doubts that the god she gets her powers from even exists and Betty is just so goddamn tender and good-natured it hurts.

They fight orcs.  They love orcs.  They fight assassins.  They drink a lot.  They fight wars.  They have complex relationships.  And every issue comes with a drink recipe at the end.

I can’t talk about what an important comic this is in a studiously distant fashion.  It’s too fucking good for that.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t talk about what an important comic Rat Queens is in three easy steps.

1. It Features Women

This comic’s main protagonists are all female.  This is kind of the most simple and the most complex thing about Rat Queens.

On the one hand, it’s pretty simple.  I’ve ranted before how I have a hard time believing any fantasy story that doesn’t feature women in a major role; it simply doesn’t reflect my reality and I find it dreadfully boring.  The fact that we have four major protagonists and each of them is a woman is great.  The world feels more authentic to me because we’re not pretending women wouldn’t be as greedy, conniving, violent or short-tempered as dudes in the same position.

And yet…it’s so very complex because the fact that they’re women is both the biggest deal and not a big deal at all.  The characters are never doubted based on their gender.  They are never rebelling against a gender stereotype.  There is never a point of them being so exceptional because they’re women.  They’re defying everything about fantasy tropes, but they’re doing it just by virtue of existing.  They love, they fight, they bicker, they form relationships and break them, they get drunk, they loot shit, they burn things alive, they murder giant troll women in badass battles while arrows fall like rain around them because that’s what they do.

Rat Queens proves that you don’t need some trauma or rape story to explain why a woman can be strong.  Some women just are.

2. It’s Influenced, but Not by Tolkien

I mean, insofar as it’s not a story that is intently mindful of the authors who have come before it.  It’s not a comic that is very concerned with considering what literary devices will be subverted, whether or not it pays homage to what came before, or how this reflects upon the edifices erected by Tolkien and Howard.  This is a comic that, like its protagonists, is concerned chiefly with itself and what it’s doing.

But the influences are pretty important because this is a comic that’s influenced by things that it’s very taboo (in the fantasy story world, anyway) to be influenced by: Dungeons and Dragons, youth culture, glorified self-destructive behavior and…well…humanity.  There are no cold-blooded paragons of virtue, no sinister shadows who do wicked things just because, no poignant reflections upon the state of the world.  There are people who are doing what people who had access to a lot of wealth and power like adventurers would really do, there are people who display what young people under the weight of prophecy and cultural stigma really do, there are people who reject what’s come before and deal with it.

And that brings me to number three.

3. It Was Made For Me

And you, too, I think, if you’ve ever read a book review where the reviewer praises the author for “paying homage/respect/tribute” to the books that have come before and wanted to vomit.

I can only really comment from a genre literature standpoint, but Rat Queens does so much of what I’ve desperately wanted to do and embodies so many things that I think are artistically virtuous that I can’t help but like it.  Rejection is seen as something beautiful here.  Striking it out on your own is commendable.  Making mistakes and having problems is seen as an inherent part of being a person.  Giving the finger to what other people want you to do is a necessary part of life and planting your feet, taking a shot and saying “tonight, I will have sex with an orc” is among the very highest honors you can do.

It is a fantasy story that wholly embraces youth and vigor and it’s just so goddamn great.  Betty is awesome.  More of that, please.

You can find Rat Queens in any comic store, but I get it off of Comixology.  Their first volume, Sass and Sorcery, is out now.  Get it.