By Cat Wyatt
It’s time for another Lumberjanes adventure! Some of the Lumberjanes have decided to team up and get the camp’s newsletter back up and running (which would have the added bonus of getting them a new badge). Oddly enough, our Roanoke cabin is not the forefront of this adventure, but instead, the Zodiac cabin is.
Hes appears to be the one in charge of making the newsletter, and thus I’m going to name her editor for it. I think Hes has the hardest job of the group; wrangling so many ‘Janes together for one project and keeping them all on track. Plus condensing their work…yikes.
Emily got stuck with the ‘weird corner’ segment, which sounds cool. Except when you consider where they are, and how basically everything that happens is weird. Try condensing that news down into a page or two. No thank you! Wren is making the comics, which is so appropriate. Barney is a reporter, which is adorable and sweet. And Diane got saddled with making the horoscopes for the newsletter. Which some would argue is the easiest bit of all, so naturally, it’s too much work for Diane. But she does hand in her work, even if it is a bit on the aggressive and overdramatic side. I mean, it’s the Lumberjanes, so it’ll be fine, right?
Oh! I forgot to mention a member of the team. Cassie isn’t part of the Zodiac cabin (at least, I don’t think she is?), but she is helping out by printing the newsletter for everyone. Apparently, she’s the only one that can get the thing to work, so it’s not like they had an option.
So, remember Diane’s horoscope? Well it turns out that they’re eerily accurate. Lumberjanes are finding lost stuff, or avoiding dangers just by listening to the advice they’re given. Which is all well and good, until the horoscopes start predicting negative things (a new hobby will be disastrous, you’ll spill your juice, don’t leave your cabin without Band-Aids, etc); which results in most of the Lumberjanes staying in and avoiding trouble. Not very Lumberjane-like, if you ask me.
This is around the point where Diane shifts the blame off herself by admitting she wasn’t the one writing the horoscopes. She was making Cassie do it (because Cassie was so desperate to be liked, she eagerly agreed to help out any way she could).
So, a twist that isn’t really a twist (if you recognize the name Cassie for what it is, at least); Cassie is a seer, but like every other woman in her family she’s been cursed; nobody will ever believe her prophecies. That is…until Diane got the curse lifted off the camp, which apparently also affected Cassie. So that’s a nice bonus, right? Have a seer on the Lumberjanes side should theoretically help them avoid disasters…at least…in theory.
For the time being it’s probably better to keep Cassie’s prophecies slightly under control though. I understand that she wants to help, but sometimes there’s such a thing as too much knowledge about the future, and it her prophecies are keeping the ‘Janes from going outside and having fun…well then clearly we’ve hit that point. However, the Lumberjanes now have the most accurate weather person ever. Seriously, I’m jealous. I wish we could get predictions like that.
This was a pretty lighthearted and fun issue, which is what I love so much about the Lumberjanes. This one was probably a little fluffier than usual, with no real crazy adventures happening. In fact, they never even left the main part of the camp once during this story. I think that may be a first!
They don’t normally tell their stories so that they’ll fit inside one issue, but it is a nice change when it works out that way. Plus, it was nice to see more of the Lumberjanes. We’ve seen a bit of the Zodiac cabin, but it’s been awhile since we’ve seen them, and we barely know anyone outside of those two cabins (like Cassie), so that was fun. I do hope they end up using Cassie to track down more of the open portals, which would be pretty cool.
As per usual the artwork for this series is adorable. There isn’t a ton of attention to detail, and yet every camper has their own distinguishing feature(s) and are easily identified at a glance (even if I don’t always recall their names…but that’s mostly on me and my bad memory).
Score: 4/5
Lumberjanes #48
BOOM! Box