Bookish Thoughts

In the third volume of Lumberjanes , the cast gets split up into two different stories. Mal and Molly head out on a picnic while April, Jo, and Ripley stay at camp and try to collect some easy badges. Unfortunately, April's competitive streak makes it difficult for her and her friends to complete any badges. Meanwhile Mal and Molly's picnic is interrupted by another weird adventure, this one involving dinosaurs, inter-dimensional portals, and a stolen pair of glasses. These comics are so much fun, and I'm really excited for my kids to be old enough to start reading them. They deal with all the problems of growing up against a backdrop of scary, supernatural adventures. It's like Buffy for a younger audience. I've fallen way behind on this series, but I'll have to start collecting them again. They make for excellent summer afternoon reads.

Although Lumberjanes has since been promoted to ongoing comic, it was originally intended to be 8 issues long. As such, the first and second volume (which contain those 8 issues) make for a nice, complete story. Which means that, as much as I've enjoyed this series, I'll probably stop here. But this was a great story about girls at camp confronting supernatural creatures. I probably should have re-read the first volume to refresh myself on the story so far. But it didn't take me too long to settle back into this story. And I was able to figure out most of what I needed to know from context. I probably missed out on some suspense, but that's alright. I can always read the two volumes back to back in the future to get the complete story. For now, the back half of the story actually works pretty well on its own. It helps that the main villain is introduced here, having lurked in the shadows for the first four issues. And now that the friendships between the main girls...

Like a lot of people, I first heard about Noelle Stevenson when her " Broship of the Rings " fanart series exploded on the internet a few years ago. I kept following along as she continued to post fanart and comics of other geeky movies. It wasn't too long before she started posting her own characters and artwork, mostly her homework assignments. Then she started her own webcomic,  Nimona  (which you should definitely read). Since graduating college, it seems like Stevenson has been everywhere. She's done some cover art, most notably for Rainbow Rowell's  Fangirl . She wrote one-offs for Sleepy Hollow and Wonder Women comic books. She's a staff writer on a children's show called  Wander Over Yonder . And she has an ongoing comic called  Lumberjanes  through Boom! Comics. And she seems to be announcing more projects every month. Lumberjanes  follows five girls having adventures and fighting monsters at summer camp. They earn badges for things like a...