Rat Queens #12
Written by Kurtis J Wiebe
Art by Tess Fowler
Cover by Stjepan Šejic
Colors by Tamra Bonvillain
Letters by Ed Brisson
Published by Image Comics
Kudos to Stjepan Šejic on his wonderful cover for issue #12, which acts as prelude for the issue at hand with a single bit of apt imagery–Betty, in the place of Bilbo Baggins, stealing candy from a dragon she is unaware of. Similarly, this issue shows our ever confident Rat Queens questing towards Mage University and finding more in the shadows than they are prepared to face. While that sounds rather ominous, the humor remains and is foregrounded in a story of increasing gravitas.
Issue #12 continues the new narrative arc, opening with a drunk Violet adventuring to the potty. Her call to battle–“To the shitter, my Rat Queens!”–encompasses the crude humor Wiebe instills in these warrior women, and part of why they so delightfully break the gender stereotypes of most comics. Returning to her room, she finds the door locked. Kicking it down, she interrupts the attempted assassination of Betty. Violet flexes drunken warrior bravado, but finds her physical prowess somewhat diminished to comical effect–farce employed by a badly aimed dagger and a deadpan reaction of “Balls.” Still, the assassin realizes this isn’t her moment and makes an escape, putting the “ass” back in assassin by gassing our heroes.
Wiebe’s narrative progression moves deftly between humor, adventure (combat), and emotional connection. The vomit-inducing gas has sobered Violet, and now she and Betty have a heart-to-heart about the assassin’s motive–Betty is wanted as the last free member of the Five Monkeys, a group of Smidgeons wrongly accused of an unnamed crime. Betty asks that it remain their secret. Betty’s characterization is striking–sometimes mature, sexual being, other times childlike. Here she starts as the child, being protected and soothed by Violet, but as their conversation turns to trying to identify the assassin, mature Betty returns, showing her rogue detecting skills. The assassin’s purple eyes place her from the Bogin family…as in Bilford Bogin, the analogue to Bilbo Baggins in the Rat Queens universe.
Now, Wiebe presents some emotion as the issue shifts to Dee. The new scene shows Dee visiting her family magically. Tamra Bonvillain’s coloring adds emotional depth. Dee’s mother and brother are dressed in purple, like Dee, but their setting is vivid green with orange flowers. The effect is verdant, life-affirming. As Dee returns to the temple pool to travel back, the background is dark purple and blue, evoking the solitude of death. Still, as she travels through the sacred space of the portal, a kind of universal void with magical creatures and stairs, the two color schemes mix for a psychedelic, black-light poster effect, an astral plane existence separated from the practicalities of family life. Dee returns to her room, places the doorway to family back in a jar, and cries with the pain of missing them.
The Queens set out again for Mage University, but they are surprised by a blizzard, and Hannah gets the best joke of the issue: “Wizard probably did it.” The four of them trudging through the snowy pass is reminiscent of the Fellowship of the Ring. They too must go inside the mountain rather than perish in the elements. Hannah pulls out her magic map (D&D player characters everywhere long for this spell.) and determines they must go to Dank Cave. As the four head towards the respite of the cave, Betty glimpses a dragon. But due to her candy-drug munching, she writes it off as her hallucinatory imagination.
It turns out the cave is both more and less dangerous than its name initially suggests. It’s a stoner hangout for the mage students, a place to smoke and make-out. Hannah’s sexual reputation is written on the walls in crude, juvenile ways, which she brazenly owns by doubling-down on the imagery. She relates one of her favorite memories–a time when she scared another student onto a fire. Her enjoyment of the students’ torment has her cackling in the retelling. The demonic characteristic she models here is only undercut after the establishment as she adds the detail that the fire was illusory, no one was hurt.
That reminder of her demonic side is crucial for the next reveal. In the climax of the issue, she sneaks to the back of the cave and is ambushed by Hazirel, a demon who calls her slave and reminds her that the powers that she tapped in to in order to save her friends and the town in the last arc came with contractual terms. The demon threatens to reveal who she really is to her friends. In this way, the issue opens and closes with secrets–first Betty’s and now Hannah’s. The four need each other to overcome their foes, but the secrets divide them and expose them to weaknesses.
Hannah runs back to where the Queens are sleeping and rouses them to battle. Hell shades have appeared. They attempt a desperate escape, back out into the blizzard on the mountain, now with only half their gear and heavily injured from the shades. With only three miles towards the university, each panel shows one of them falling behind until only Violet continues on for help. The final panel of the issue gut-wrenchingly depicts Violet falling to unconsciousness even as she continues to talk herself forward.
Wiebe leaves our Queens in dire circumstances with numerous foes after them–both external and internal as the stakes are indeed raised.