They’re not your typical band of high fantasy adventurers: Hannah the Rockabilly Elven Mage, Violet the Hipster Dwarven Fighter, Dee the Atheist Human Cleric, and Betty the Hippy Hafling Thief. These women are the stars of the new Image Comics/Shadowline series Rat Queens, and they’re the deadliest grog-guzzling, death-dealing, battle-maidens-for-hire in Palisade.

In this new series by Kurtis J. Wiebe and Roc Upchurch, starting in September, the Rat Queens are taking on the quest of a lifetime… or at least the quest that’s going to get them out of the latest jam they’ve found themselves in: clearing out some pesky goblins from a cave. But these aren’t just any goblins, and Hindman Cave isn’t just any cave.

Wiebe described the project in an interview with IGN:

I suppose it’s obvious at this point that this is a love letter to my years of Dungeons and Dragons and fantasy but tweaked ever so slightly with a modern twist. Rat Queens is a title I’m super excited about. This is a series I’ve wanted to write for years but never felt quite ready to do it.

Wiebe met his collaborator on Rat Queens, Roc Upchurch at Comic-Con in 2011.

Upchuch adds:

A fantasy setting with female leads is pretty much the dream for me, so I’m having the time of my life with Rat Queens. Creating these characters was both fun and challenging. The girls have very different personalities, so I wanted them to have very distinct and unique costumes to reflect that. The world itself is so fun to draw. I want this to be a place that fans of fantasy would want to live in with characters that they would want adventures with.

A Rat Queens webcomic by Wiebe, Dejmal, and Upchurch will run each week on the Image Comics tumblr until the release of the first issue on September 25.

Rat Queens #1 — including a special variant edition with a cover by Saga artist Fiona Staples — can be pre-ordered now from the July issue of Previews (Diamond Code JUL130404).