In volume 3 of Lumberjanes, we start off with the girls’ attempts to earn their If You Got It, Haunt It badge, complete with the stereotypical circle-around-the-campfire-and-tell-ghost-stories plot, flashlights and all. After their night of terror, the Lumberjanes have a well-deserved day off; naturally, though, no day can go as planned with the Roanoke crew. Molly and Mal have a date – er, picnic that goes horribly awry while the rest of our beloved Lumberjanes manage to turn the most boring day ever into… you guessed it, a disaster.
This issue started out incredibly promising with the ghost story arc; Stevenson and Watters had the brilliant idea to have each story narrated by a different artist, which made for a very unique and entertaining graphic novel experience. The art styles for each story somehow seemed to fit the narrator, right down to the font each artist chose. (Like, can we talk about how fantastically fitting the no-nonsense style of Jen’s parts were?)
Sadly, though the ghost stories were everything I had grown accustomed to in Lumberjanes, the rest of this volume was a little bit “meh” for me. I know, I’m just as shocked as you guys are – I mean, Mal/Molly is THE OTP, and they finally go on a date, so ??? What gives, Destiny?
The date started off cute, quickly moved to sad and a little bit awkward, and then just turned into another wacky adventure the moment things started getting deep. I mean, I wasn’t asking for much, but I did have hopes that their time alone would allow for a bit of back story and character development, and while the story did tilt in that direction, it quickly veered away and left me a little bit disappointed.
As for the rest of the Roanoke girls, their antics were hilarious as always, but it felt like a lot of “filler” material; they set off on a mission to earn the most boring badges they could find, turned each task into a mild disaster, rinse and repeat.
On a less important (but still worthy of mention) note, I really did not care much at all for the illustrations in the last few chapters of this issue. I’m sure Carolyn Nowak’s style is a favorite of many, but it just didn’t quite jive with me. I miss Brooke Allen.
I still enjoyed volume 3 thoroughly, but it was definitely not up to par with volumes 1 & 2.
