The afternoon after I finished the latest installment in the Lumberjanes series, I watched the most recent trailer of director Ron Howard's forthcoming In The Heart of The Sea. For those who aren't rabid Howard fans, this maritime film is more or less a historical drama based on the shipwreck of the whaling ship Essex, which may have been the inspiration for Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. The flyby juxtaposition of these events brought to mind a particular quote from the Great American Novel: "I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing."
Melville's words are fitting on both a cursory and authorial level. Like the pages of Moby-Dick, you could say that Lumberjanes #18 is essentially waterlogged. This particular episode takes place on the docks of Roanoke Cabin's resident mystical-creature-teeming lake with appearances by certain said mystical creatures; but like the miasmic, liminal themes of Melville's greatest work, it's entrenched in a maritime-tinged cosmic shift.
The issue marks the first with Kat Leyh (known for her work on the web series Bravest Warriors and the vignette-fueled webcomic Supercakes) as a lead writer after the departure of founding co-creator Noelle Stevenson, and it shows — but while the sea change is tangible, the directional shift is far from detrimental.
When we last left Jo, April, Mal, Molly, Ripley and their counselor Jen, they had just stumbled upon a possible rift in the time-space continuum, which ensures that Miss Quinzella Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle Crumpet's Camp for Hardcore Lady Types operates on the schedule of an entirely different dimension.
Rather than pick right up where Lumberjanes #17 left off, Leyh's first round as the newly minted co-writer (along with Lumberjanes OG Shannon Watters) trades dire circumstances for levity. Even so, the diversion is still a more-than-excellent romp, including punkish merywomyn and longstanding rivalries.
