4 out of 5

Yes, I’m stopping Rat Queens, but only because the quality that drew me to Wiebe – his very un-comic booky loose plotting style, that nonetheless gained reader interest by building up story and character and then wrapping back around to a conclusion – loses wind, seemingly, when the story is ongoing, and from the start, RQ has stressed style over function, in a sense, not giving very much indication of what the forward drive could be so much as proving that the book had swagger.  Howdya like that sentence, eh?

But in the meantime, let’s say you take kindly to the pacing and style of this book; the start of the second arc starts off on a good foot of following up some of the dirty deeds that were hinted at previously while also moving along some of the Queens’ relationships, resulting in some fun Lovecraft hijinks in issue 7.  Roc’s art and colors continue to impress, mining a palette for the latter that is equally muddy and murky and yet incredibly eye-catching, a nice blend to match the character’s rough-and-tumble-yet-lovable dispositions.  And his figures and framing are all very well personalized and placed, excepting some difficult-to-read interactions when the action gets heavy.

Issue 8 takes a questionable pause in the current story to flashback on Violet’s upbringing, and while the story makes for a great one-shot – much more interesting than the recent Braga oner – it’s not clear why Wiebe would interrupt an arc (especially on a book with long pauses between issues) to tell this tale, and is a main reason for my docking of this set a star… though I realize that maybe premature as the conclusion of the arc could clear-up the need for issue 8.  OH WELL.

So fare thee well, Rat Queens.  I respect ya’, but my comic book dollars are stretched too thin to warrant buying a book I can’t say I’m fully following plotwise from issue to issue.