Rick Remender and Paul Azaceta take comics back to basics with the first issue of The Seasons. It’s a madcap, joyful ride through what feels like an old-timey, hand-drawn animated feature that’s got something dreadful and horrifying brewing beneath the zaniness.

Remender (Grommets, Uncanny X-Force) has been a superstar writer of creator-owned comics for more than 20 years now. He’s done it all. Science fiction, comedy, horror, drama, all of those genres all at once, but The Seasons shows off a conscious effort to rely on Paul Azaceta’s (Outcast, Killadelphia) kinetic, vibrant artwork to do the heavy storytelling lifting. Less is more in the Seasons sisters’ vaguely familiar, but strange, new world. We’re given little else besides character and world building through Azaceta’s pencils and Matheus Lopes’s colors (Batman and Robin: Year One). The spare dialogue offers classic Remender-style idiosyncrasies that make Spring and her older sister Autumn real and rich and immediately endearing—and really, all that’s happening here is Spring chasing down a windblown wayward letter from Autumn and taking readers on a tour of the streets and shops and everyday ins and outs of New Gaulia.

Beneath the light, quick read, however, lurks something sinister. A carnival begins to parade through the cobblestone streets with the Ringleader presiding. Is he a clown-ish wraith on stilts? Perhaps an otherworldly elder god draped in motley? Who’s to say at the moment. But as the opening pages show us, he’s one of the few living things left in a city called Neocairo, and that doesn’t bode well for anybody. Especially because Autumn’s letter urges Spring to skip town as soon as possible lest she experience a similar fate as the folks in Neocairo.

Remender, Azaceta, and Lopes allow their story to truly comic-out with this issue. The details, nuances, and wonder of this world rely on the action unfolding unaided by language until language becomes completely necessary. Are we given the whys and the whatfors? No. But that’s why we’re comics fans, isn’t it? To come back in 30 days for the next mesmerizing issue to peel away a bit more of that onion? To allow our minds to fill in the gaps in the interim in order to build this world more fully without our hands being held? The Seasons is a comic book in its truest form. And I, for one, will be returning to New Gaulia next month to see what happens next, that’s for sure.

Creative Team: Rick Remender (writer), Paul Azaceta (artwork), Matheus Lopes (colors)
Publisher: Image Comics
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