Sweet Tooth #1

Series: Sweet Tooth
Words: Jeff Lemire
Images: Jeff Lemire
Issue Number: 1
Release Date:
Format: Trade Paperback
This week has been stressful for me thus the lack of updates. Family stress. Life stress. Computer stress. So I indulged in a small amount of retail therapy. One being a new netbook. The other included a whole ton of trades. Sweet Tooth was an impulse buy based off of a random suggestion from the lovely person who works at our comic book store. She knew I was enjoying both new and old Animal Man and I essentially showed up and all but ordered her to help me drop over $100 dollars on graphic novels because I was having a bad day.
Essentially Sweet Tooth takes place in a post apocalyptic future. Most of the world becomes infected with some form of virus. Children born after that point are mutated with animal features. According to Wikipedia it can be considered Mad Max meets Bambi. While some what apt that description does not fully capture the hooks this story has gotten into me.
Most of the first trade sets up the story. I am really glad that I did not read it as a single issue comic. Because as I have established before. I am very impatient and dislike mostly set up.
The story is fairly simple for this trade at least. Future has gone to hell. Everyone is panicked. What is different is hunted down. Everyone is dying and humanity is horrible.
The main character (Gus, who has antlers) vaguely reminds me of a Prince Myshkin type character. A poor and good person thrown into a very corrupt world. For those of you not as obsessed with Russian Literature, that would be a Jesus type character.
In turn the side stories involve Jepperd who is a none mutated human who will likely soon be infected with the plague. I don’t want to give too much away about the story and at this stage talking about Jepperd and not giving anything away is tough. He is probably for all of his flaws one of my favourite characters. He is a probably once good man who has been corrupted by the world around him and is just trying to survive. I am hopeful to maybe see him continuing on with a side story in the next trade that explores more of people doing evil things not because they are horrible people but because they are making the best choice they can with the option they see available.
Personally I love this story. Not just the comic book but watching someone who is pure thrown into a very evil world and trying to navigate it.
It does get bonus points for being Canadian content. Hey do you think if I review enough Canadian comics I will get federal CRTC funding? Or a swanky Global review show (yes I am looking at you Reviews on the Run and Electric Playground)
If you are only into super heroes give this one a skip. But if you want to branch out from them. If you are looking for a cute End of Days story well then it may be worth checking out. Also, if you are a comic book fan who likes to stack their shelves with graphic novels to act as gateway comic this might be a decent buy. I will keep you posted on the next few trades at the very least.
I am certainly not going to wait until my next bad week to buy more.