Seattle’s music scene was more than just a blip on the radar; it created some of our generation’s biggest rock stars, but also some of its greatest tragedies. One everlasting presence from that scene is Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready. McCready has teamed up with writer Mark Sable and Z2 Comics to present a graphic novel and rock opera about the Seattle scene he helped build, called A Farewell to Seasons: An Alternate History of Seattle, which is full of the emotion and passion that made Seattle a hub for rock and alternative music in the early 1990s.

Mike McCready’s Rock Opera

The book starts with a foreword by Singles director Cameron Crowe before introducing us to the three main characters we follow. David, Angela, and Jonathan each find their way to Seattle in their own unique ways. While they have all been playing instruments and have talent, their stories unfold differently. We are guided through the story by the Queen. A character similar to Marvel’s The Watcher, who is able to see the encompassing story before we do. While any tropes found in rock star stories can be found, many of these are based on true events. Things like meteoric rises, tragic burnouts, and predatory executives have been done before as satire rather than as actual evils.

Like many music scenes, success brings stresses and unhealthy ways to cope with it. Whether it is the sexism that forces Angela to carve her own path after every disappointment, or the copious amounts of substances that numb some of our characters until they are silenced by excess, we see how these affect the characters and the people around them. While drugs can be seen as a villain, it is obvious the record executive is the true antagonist of this story, ensuring his prospects get what they want rather than what they need. These grounded emotional beats sit inside a story that re-imagines the scene through composite characters.

It’s The Same Seattle, But Different

Much of this is clearly drenched in truthful analogy, but McCready was adamant about including details that were true to the area, such as laws prohibiting those under twenty-one from dancing after a certain time of night. That being said, this is not a “what if Kurt hadn’t died” or “what if Pearl Jam had the ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ moment” story. The story presented is a retelling of the Seattle scene. There are character stand-ins for some of the big hitters and lost souls of the scene, such as Andrew Wood from Mother Love Bone, whose life was cut short by drugs.

While it is very obvious that there are some references to the scene and other musicians who populated it, they are mostly lost on a person like me who didn’t grasp grunge like others did. In this case, that is not a bad thing. The story itself is still engaging and interesting. We know David, Angela, and Jonathan will cross paths, but reading about that journey is interesting. You can forgive a story that blurs the line between fact and fiction to get its point across as it weighs the good and the bad that fame brings.

The Creative Team

Bastian Piriz’s art is great; he really captures the style of the grunge era beyond its plaid stereotype. As the characters venture out into the U.S., we see some of the country’s and rock ‘n’ roll’s most famous landmarks. Piriz’s interpretation is well done. There’s a gloss over the colors that makes this feel like it’s a rock ‘n’ roll book of the 1980s. I always love the lettering in Z2 books; it’s flashy but complements their stories well. McCready didn’t just come up with the story; he also made a record that is available when you buy the deluxe and platinum editions of the book. The songs serve as a record of David’s point of view in the story.

Overall Grade 8/10

Z2 Comics definitely releases many projects that are niche to certain fanbases but are done properly for them. Of the handful I have read, the packaging, the story, and the art are all phenomenal. Mike McCready’s Farewell to Seasons is no exception. While there are aspects of the Seattle grunge scene I enjoy, it was never something I was all in on. Even though there are some references I am sure I missed, I can recognize how special this comic is. Z2 Comics continues to impress me with the types of projects they release and the love they put into them. They are proving that it’s special enough… It’s worth it. You can purchase all versions of “Mike McCready’s A Farewell to Seasons: An Alternative History of Seattle” at Z2 Comics.

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