Out of the gate I’ll note that, of the ~20 volumes of LUMBERJANES, I’ve only read the first arc: BEWARE THE KITTEN HOLY, which solely collects the first four issues of the series. (Yeah, I know — I expected it to contain six issues too, instead of umpteen variant covers at the end.)
However, LUMBERJANES: BEWARE THE KITTEN HOLY (KITTEN HOLY from here on out because while it’s a great title, I am very tired of repeatedly typing out overly long titles) immediately knows what it wants to do, knows how to do it, and knows what you expect from it.
In short: it’s a series about a pack of teen-ish youths at a very rural summer camp. I’m old, so I’m not really sure if teens still go to summer camps, but I certainly did and KITTEN HOLY encapsulates the surreal nature of temporarily living in the middle of nowhere, surrounded mostly by water and trees and bug juice.
To extrapolate: it’s about five wildly different girls who manage to bond with each other, and the strange supernatural events they end up being entangled with. There’s Molly, the tomboy with the Davy Crockett headpiece; April, the sprite-like nerd who replaces all of what would normally be curse words with the names of feminist artists; Ripley, who is overly-active and overly-physical; Jo, the level-headed one who still stands up for herself; and Mal, who would rather fade into the background but is damn smart. Oh, there are also the camp heads, Jen and Rosie. Jen’s all about rules, while still being empathetic, while Rosie is all fun and games and unruliness.
Did I mention that the camp is named Roanoke? I should have led with that.
Also, it does feature a quality amount of queerness, which I can’t help but appreciate in a YA work.
ND Stevenson provided a lot of the foundation of the series, both with character designs and themes, but it’s most certainly a collective effort. Brooke Ellis’ pencils and inks are so exuberant; Maarta Laiho’s colors pop like wildfire, and Aubrey Aisee’s lettering is singularly personal to the characters. This is a work that embraces the energy and wildness of youth, and of comics. It’s loads of fun and, well, if I had nieces, I would certainly gift them copies.