I was charmed by the cover of issue #38/39. I was also confronted with problems of rat history that prompted a series of inquiries, which I reproduce here in search of a definitive answer:
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The rat audience population seems to imply that time passes for NYRA rats between each issue in which they are portrayed, and that their world has a stable timeline to which they can return, for instance, on this issue’s cover. This, in turn, implies the existence of rat history. The human version of The Nutcracker ballet is based on the 1816 story by E. T. A. Hoffmann, Nussknacker und Mausekönig (The Nutcracker and the Mouse King). Setting aside the problem of mice—for indeed the mice have often been transfigured into rats in American Nutcrackers—does this signify an early German romantic turn in the Rat Universe that parallels our own? Who is the Rat Hoffmann? Whither Rat Goethe? Will we get to meet these eminent rats in later issues?
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I initially thought the emerging “Rat King”—a rat wearing a mask of a rat, indicated by the differing eye structure and multiple nefarious teet…