Boom! Studios Plans First Original Lumberjanes Graphic Novel
Boom! Studios announced plans to publish Lumberjanes: The Infernal Compass by Lilah Sturges and artist polterink, the first original graphic novel in the bestselling comics series about supernatural adventures at a girls summer camp, in October 2018.
Lumberjanes: The Infernal Compass will be published under the BOOM! Box imprint in October 2018.
In this new original graphic novel, Mal, Ripley, Molly, April & Jo become separated during an orienteering outing thanks to a mysterious compass. All the while, Molly starts feeling more insecure about her relationship with Mal and its effect on the other girls, and a lonely woman explorer is trying to steal the compass.
Sturges, who has worked on writer Bill Willingham’s acclaimed series Jack of Fables, is a trans woman and said she is a “huge fan," of the series. She said, “It's not just that it's fun and funny and charming--and it is all those things--but it also represents queerness in a way that I think is enormously important. In the world of Lumberjanes being queer is simply accepted and unremarkable, and I respond deeply to that.”
Originally created by in 2014 by series co-creators Shannon Watters, Grace Ellis, Brooklyn Allen, and Noelle Stevenson, Lumberjanes is the story of Miss Qiunzella Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle Crumpet's camp for Hardcore Lady-Types, an unusual summer camp that’s full of crazy (and very funny) mysteries in a story featuring LGBTQ themes.
This is the first standalone release of a Lumberjanes original graphic novel.
The ongoing periodical series has been collected into seven volumes of trade paperbacks and has sold millions of copies. The series has won an GLAAD Media Ward, Eisner awards and crossed over into the DC Universe in Lumberjanes/Gotham Academy. Lumberjanes has been turned into a series of middle-grade prose novels at Abrams Books, and a feature film is in development at 20th Century Fox.
Boom! Studios editor Dafna Pleban said “With this first graphic novel, we get to spend time with Mal and Molly and the rest of the Janes on an adventure fans won’t want to miss! Lilah and polterink bring a new dimension and perspective to their adventures.”
"The idea of giving young people models of healthy queer relationships is something that really matters to me, and something I could have used myself when I was young,” Sturges said, explaining that the story will focus on the relationship between Mal and Molly.
“First love is a fraught, tender thing, and we loved the idea of focusing on the fears and anxieties the come with starting a relationship in an existing friend group. The rest of it was coming up with the funnest, Lumberjane-iest possible means of expressing that conflict in a big way,” Sturges said,
