The Seeds

The Seeds by Ann Nocenti
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As the world crumbles and humanity gets more dependent on tech, some people forsake technology and form their own community. When Astra stumbles upon the story of the century, she finds there's more to the Luddites than meets the eye...

I've been a fan of Ann Nocenti since her Daredevil and Kid Eternity runs and David Aja knocked me for a loop with his art on Hawkeye but I had no idea what they'd cook up together. It was a little late but I finally picked this up when the trade dropped.

The Seeds takes place in a dystopian near future. Everything is on the cloud, nobody can live without their phone, and the ecological disasters are piling up. Astra's editor wants her to find a story or make one up and luckily she stumbles upon a love affair between wheelchair bund Lola and Race, a man from the tech free zone. Or is he?

No, he isn't but that's all I'm saying about the plot.

Aja's art is fantastic. I'll be surprised if this book doesn't win awards because of it. The color palette was the first thing I noticed. Other than a pale brown, mustardy color, the book is in black and white. Aja works some magic in this, his art making the dirty dystopia feel alive and otherworldly. Heavy on black, his minimalist art reminds me of Alex Toth quite a bit.

The story has a lot of interesting twists and turns. Someone is collecting the seeds of a dying earth and planting their own. Unfortunately, it doesn't really come together for me at the end. I felt like I missed a big event between the third and fourth issues. Some aspects of the tale, like hive collapses, ecological disaster, and news being fabrications, seemed all too likely.

While it didn't quite come together like I hoped, The Seeds is a gorgeous book with some compelling plot points. Four out of five gas masks.

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