After several volumes of stumbling trying to reclaim the lost heights, Rat Queens goes out (temporarily, at least, it's unclear if the ad in the back for a final graphic novel is actually coming to fruition) with a whimper, in the by far weakest volume yet. The artwork in four of the five issues here collected is the weakest its been in the entire run (the artist can clearly draw, but the characters do not look like themselves at all -- and Betty in particular looks like some kind of goblin for some reason). And the story, oh boy. Literally three disjointed and barely related separate stories of "we all fall into a trippy nonsense world mostly against our will". Three. One would have been bad enough. The only respite is an almost equally silly and empty werewolf issue, with a problem that's as quickly resolved as it is introduced. Some good dialogue (unfortunately drowni in the art and nonsensical stories) and the actual ending (the last page or so) are the biggest redeeming features here, but that's really not much. While the earlier volumes since the soft reboot has been a slight disappointment for me in their lack of direction and scope, at least it felt fun. Some small handfuls of dialogue and the end twist aside, this wasn't. For a potentially final volume of what was once a pretty great series, that's saddening more than anything else. ( )

Rat Queens drunkenly stumbles into another hiatus as the second writer and fourth and fifth (? sixth and seventh?) artists feebly wrap up their run with unreadable dreck and the egregious inability to draw Betty.

But the trainwreck ain't over yet, folks! An ad in the back says the original author, Kurtis J. Wiebe, is re-teaming with the controversial first artist, Roc Upchurch, to produce an original graphic novel with the definitive conclusion later this year. Hoo boy. ( )