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.
It seems hat despite Leyh's obvious talent and more-than-impressive credentials, it's wiser to ease yourself into cold water than to cannonball. If this is the case, issue #18 makes perfect sense in the decision to present the Lumberjanes ladies with a conflict that places them in the role of collective mediator.
During a placid afternoon fishing, Jo reels in her first catch: a leather vest riddled with band patches (much to musically inclined Mal's delight), but with it they also lure out the fish-tailed Harlow, the vest's actual owner, a merwomyn and ex-musician with a checkered past. It's only after they hear Harlow's VH1 Behind the Music-style tale of her rock-and-roll past that April decides it's their mission to set things right.
Despite the shift from a Lumberjanes-centric plot to a third-party focus, the basic tenets of what makes the series so addictive and complex still hold water (I'm sorry, I had to). Namely, it's the precise and incisive moments of character development for each of the ensemble cast (with an honorary shoutout to April's childhood mermaid obsession), and the deceptively carefree way dense and multi-varied institutions like female camaraderie, girl-on-girl power politics, and queer lady relationships are explored — manifested in the merwomyn Harlow and her estranged bond with childhood-best-friend-cum-implied-ex-mergirlfriend Taylor, as well as her animosity toward her other former bandmates, all of whom are straight out of the Mean Girls handbook, plus a few more studs and alternative lifestyle haircuts.
To bring it back: the Melville passage I quoted at the beginning of this review is told from the perspective of Stubb, a crew member of the curse-bound ship Pequod and a subject of the monomaniacal Ahab. In the form of a monologue, Stubb is uncritical of his peg-legged, White Whale-haunted captain, and trusts in his journey. The quoted line serves as a lighthearted state of retrospective denial regarding Stubb's recognition of Ahab's nihilistic mission.
When applied to the new narrative vision of Lumberjanes under the guidance of Leyh, the sentence is still an inverted, slightly wary acceptance. As a storyteller, Leyh maintains the ethic of the Lumberjanes line, and whether she can continue to do so will be determined by the qualitative payoff of the end of this plot arc. As for my prediction? Holy Sylvia Earle, I trust her ability to lead me into all that I know may be coming.
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