Written and Illustrated by Jeff Lemire
Part one of a new storyline and a great jumping-on point for new readers! Jeff Lemire returns as regular artist for part one of “Unnatural Habits.” While Jeppard, Singh and Gus make plans to head to Alaska, things start to deteriorate for the rest of the group back at the sanctuary in the dam. Plus: a variant cover by ANIMAL MAN artist Travel Foreman!
I just recently caught up with Sweet Tooth after finding myself home for the holidays, and loved every minute of it. Now that Matt Kindt has done his share of storytelling and creator Jeff Lemire is back on artistic duties, we are returning to the main story of Gus and his protectors and followers.
Follow the cut for my thoughts on the issue.
At its core, Sweet Tooth isn’t about the plague or its mysterious origins. It is, above all, about the people who are left in this broken world and how they interact, and now that we’re back from a bit of a history lesson, Jeff Lemire is reminding us of that. This issue is primarily about characters interacting: Jeppard, Gus, and Singh reunite after Gus’s brush with death, while Becky learns about something terribly that Lucy has known for a while. Lemire’s characters always seem real, no matter whether they have antlers or not, and the joy and despair they experience resonate well within the reader. There is no writer clearly writing down dialogue in order to elicit a certain emotion from us. There are just Gus and Jeppard, Lucy and Becky. For a comic dealing with half-animal hybrids, the book has a very human heart.
While this is obviously looking at the “big picture” more than it is this issue as its own product, I do like how Lemire has handled to passage of time. For the most part, Sweet Tooth has followed its characters rather closely, at an almost, if not quite, day-to-day level. Even when time passed, things were happening. Now, though, a month has passed since we last saw Gus, Jeppard, and the rest of the crew, and very little has happened. Even while Jeppard has been killing time – and rabbits – out in the woods alone, the supposed hostiles that we saw earlier haven’t given him any lip. This could present a problem: Sweet Tooth has been on the move since issue one, with constant action and excitement. With this moment of rest, Lemire could have instead given Jeppard some heads to bust in the woods while waiting for Gus to recover, but considering the book is about Gus, that would just seem dull – and Sweet Tooth is anything but dull. Of course, even if Lemire jumped straight back into the action, like he did, that would still leave the matter of the time shift between issues, which seems strange in context of the series. Lemire “fixed” this problem, though, with the preceding 3-issue flashback story. While set in the past, it filled in the space where we might otherwise have seen Jeppard kill a few more coneys and hide from a few patrols, so that when we return to the narrative it neither seems like the action has slowed down or that Lemire skipped a beat. It’s an old writer’s trick, but a good one.
We’ve known for a while that there’s more to the supposedly safe dam and its too nice caretaker, and Lemire hasn’t forgotten how much he has hinted at already. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s when a big deal is made about a twist ending when all the clues have already been glaringly obvious – unless, of course, a bit more is added to that twist in an unexpected way, which is what Lemire manages here. Rather than the feared eye-roll and “Like I didn’t see that coming,” Lemire is able to prompt a “Like I didn’t s– oh wait, what? Now that’s interesting,” which is (well, almost) even better than your typical twist ending.
No, I’m not going to tell you what said twist ending is.
Continued belowLet’s not forget about the art. Jeff Lemire is easily one of the most unique comic artists being published today. Of course, for some people unique doesn’t necessarily mean worthwhile, because it can sometimes be hard for a reader in a medium dominated by mass-produced superhero comics to break from what is the current popular definition of “good.” Lemire’s art certainly isn’t anything like what you would expect to find in, say, Uncanny X-Men, but if there’s anything Greg Land has taught us, it’s that aesthetically attractive images don’t necessarily make good comics. In this case, Lemire stands out as the example of the difference between someone who draws pretty pictures and a true sequential artist. Look at the first five pages of Jeppard out in the woods, and the way each panel, each page, connects with those preceding and following it. Look at the expressions on Becky’s face when she finds out about Lucy’s condition. The job of a comics illustrator is to tell a story, and there are few people who can tell a story with pictures like Lemire can. Take your boring pose-y artwork, I’ll take the dynamic and highly imaginative kind instead.
As excited as I am to be getting back to the main story, this is just kind of an “Alright, now where were we?” kind of issue – thus, me talking more about the gap between issues more than anything else. Is there anything particularly exciting or noteworthy in this issue? Other than the ending, not really. Is that bad? Of course not. If you’ve been reading Sweet Tooth, then there’s no reason why you wouldn’t enjoy this issue. That being said, the solicit advertises this issue as a jumping on point, and while you certainly could do so with this issue, I don’t see why you would be terribly enticed to go on, especially since there isn’t too much exposition. Hell if I care about that, though. Anyone who jumps into the middle of an ongoing Vertigo series not named Hellblazer confuses me.
Final Verdict: 7.7 – Buy it!
