11 issues of The Seasons have all been building to this. The Seasons #11 opens up Pandora’s box, so to speak, as Rick Remender and Paul Azaceta peel back the curtain on how the threat of the mirror took over each of the sisters’ minds. The Seasons #10 ended with our main character, Spring, falling to the mysterious clown’s mirror powers, and issue #12 reveals the fallout. It’s a series-defining issue that you won’t want to miss.
While previous issues of The Seasons lingered on Summer and Winter’s experiences with the mirror’s power, The Seasons #11 cuts to the chase and only shows us Spring’s experience over five pages. It’s just enough to see what Spring desires, which is admiration for creating tasty treats from everyone. It’s endearing to see the younger of the sisters dream, but it’s quite literally shattered by Summer before it lingers too long.
Playing around with realities does make me suspicious once Spring is awake, if she’s truly not still in her own dream, but fairly quickly, we meet her parents, who have much to tell her. It’s here that we get a story within a story, featuring a creation myth of sorts as we learn how the seasons were formed each year.
These people are ravenous!
Credit: Image
Set in ancient Greece, we learn about four sisters, similar to our main characters, who had to get along to do their part for one another. They quite literally brought the seasons, but like any normal group of sisters, they didn’t always get along, setting forth a kind of curse on their mother, who was pregnant with another. That new child is the main focus for much of the rest of the issue, fleshing out a mythical fable that feels like a fairy tale parents tell their children to help them get along with their siblings. It’s also a story about being kind to everyone and not ignoring classmates and other children.
Ultimately, the mythical elements introduced in this issue further deepen the larger story. Instead of a strange magical threat, it appears that this family is entangled in a battle to save the world, one that has been building for centuries. That raises the stakes tenfold while establishing a kind of lore that ties into a family slowly revealed over the last 11 issues.
Admittedly, this is a lot to take in so briskly, from the parents being revealed to the whole family being together again. Further, I don’t quite trust everything I’m seeing, making me suspicious that there’s a twist somewhere down the line.
The Seasons #11 is the kind of issue serialized storytelling builds toward: one that answers major questions while opening the door to even bigger mysteries. Rick Remender and Paul Azaceta use the long-awaited reveal of the series’ mythology to transform what initially appeared to be a family drama with supernatural elements into something far grander in scope. The creation myth at the center of the issue feels timeless, lending emotional and thematic weight to the sisters’ journey while reframing the conflict as one with generational and even cosmic implications. The rapid pace and avalanche of revelations can occasionally leave readers scrambling to keep up, but the ambition and execution make this a defining chapter in one of comics’ most intriguing ongoing series.
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