“Rat Queens” has queer characters, but they don’t make those characters’ arcs entirely about queerness. They have fat characters, but they don’t make those characters’ personalities entirely about their weight. So while this Braga standalone issue took me a little by surprise, it definitely shouldn’t have.

WRITTEN BY: Kurtis J. Wiebe
ART BY: Tess Fowler
PUBLISHER: Image
PRICE: #3.50
RELEASE: January 14, 2015

Reviewed By Katy Rex

Wiebe’s treatment of Braga, a formerly tertiary character but a fan favorite, is as in-depth and engaging as the lead characters, proving how incredibly fleshed-out this world must be in his head. Her flashback is vaguely reminiscent of Violet’s, which I’ve reviewed here previously. It seems like a lot of adventurers in this universe may be in their position because they didn’t quite fit in at home, and rather than trying harder to conform, they left to pursue their own paths.

Rat Queens is doing a really cool thing. It’s telling stories about people who don’t often see themselves in stories, but in a way that doesn’t make it about the differences. It’s been commented on; in almost every interview Kurtis Wiebe has ever done, Rat Queens portrayal of women has come up, and each time, Wiebe talks about his strategy. When he writes about women, he writes them as people. Not as another species, not as a thing fundamentally different from himself, where he still takes into account the different experiences women have that inform their development but doesn’t make that the primary focus.

Tess Fowler, the guest artist on this one shot, has captured the feeling of the universe, of Braga and her Dave (are we divvying up Daves now? Which one can I have?), but more importantly, she did a beautiful job portraying Braga’s Orcish ancestral home. It might be, in theory, difficult designing multiple Orcish characters such that they can easily be differentiated between by the reading audience, but each character in Braga’s family is distinct and unique.

Also, remember all those questions we had? About Braga being called “the Bastard” in that battle in the first arc, about how she lost her eye, about how an Orc became part of an adventuring crew? Well, this is her origin story. Don’t worry, it all gets addressed. This origin story is about huge and formative things that happened to make Braga who she is today, and in any other series this might be a coming-out story, but once again the creative team understands that while the facets of our identity inform who we are, they do not define us, and not every origin story has to be about our labels. As important as representation is, normalizing identities is equally important, and I love the way this series has continued to treat underrepresented populations.

As frustrating as a one shot can be in the middle of a series, because come on, we want to know what happens next, this one is amazing. The Braga One shot is worth picking up, most definitely.

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Katy Rex writes comics analysis at endoftheuniversecomics.com, comicsbulletin.com, and bloody-disgusting.com. She also writes scholarly articles for various academic journals. She really likes butt jokes, dinosaurs, and killing psychos and midgets in Borderlands 2. She has a great sense of humor if you’re not an asshole.