Lumberjanes #48

Lumberjanes #48 is a great little stand-alone issue that fills out the world of the camp for hardcore lady-types. It begins with Barney distributing the new camp newsletter in a story written by Shannon Watters and Kat Leyh and illustrated by Ayme Sotuyo. The Zodiac cabin is putting together articles, sports, weather, horoscopes, cartoons, and a “weird corner”. The responsibility for that drives one contributor crazy, making her yell, “Do you know how much odd this camp has?!” Yes! That’s why we like reading this comic!

Our core group of scouts is in the background this issue as the various newsletter writers and editors get some focus, reminding us that this is a camp with a large number of attendees. The artist is amusingly pretentious, the editor is wrangling space and deadlines in pursuit of her own ambitious goals, and there’s an charming cat in a press hat!

The conflict, such as it is — honestly, often I just want to bask in the details of this wondrous place, without worrying about story or plot — occurs when Diane, the ex-goddess, puts together some ominous horoscopes which begin affecting the behavior of the scouts.

For a short, single-issue story, there’s a unusual amount of development here, as unhealthy relationships are corrected, misrepresentation is outed and addressed, a self-effacing person is encouraged, and potential disaster is redirected in a creative way. Plus, there’s a “free and open press montage”, reminding us of the value of journalism.

Lumberjanes #48 cover by Kat Leyh

My greatest disappointment was that the title page had the wrong title and badge on it (at least on the digital review copy I read). It was labeled “Zoo It Yourself”, which had no bearing on the contents and was previously used on issue #45. The badge was a matching picture of an elephant. I really wanted to see what the badge for “Press Is More” would look like, as pointed out in this issue.

Update: The folks at flourish let me know that the title and badge were intentional, due to a change in how they label the arcs:

Because this stand-alone story falls within the four-issue arc that included the “Zoo It Yourself” story, we made a decision it would be best to keep the badge the same for the whole arc, as we normally do one badge per arc, rather than one per issue now.

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