Review: Sweet Tooth- Full Series
Quick Summary
Pros: The comic’s main narrative is compelling and easy to jump into. The comic’s mysteries are fascinating and become even more interesting as the narrative progresses. The characters are all wonderful and the character-development they experience is fantastic. The comic’s visuals look nice and pair perfectly with the storytelling.
Cons: The comic’s message about society is a bit underwhelming.
Overall: This is an incredibly unique and incredibly enjoyable comic book series. The comic takes readers on a wild ride that is solid at the start but only gets better as it progresses. Watching the mysteries unfold, watching the characters face their problems, and experiencing it all alongside beautiful visuals is simply great. Any reader can enjoy this series but it will particularly appeal to those who like deep mysteries and well-written characters.
Story
Sweet Tooth, by Jeff Lemire, is a weird, wild, and wonderful ride. The narrative hooks you in with drama and keeps you hooked through a series of deeper and deeper mysteries. This is a comic where every answer leads to new questions and these questions and answers become even more interesting as new ones arise. This captivating narrative also comes with an array of great characters. The characters are well written the whole way through and add a lot of emotion and drama into the mix. Together, these factors make for a reading experience that is easy to start and hard to stop. My only complaint is that the comic’s themes regarding humanity are just alright. Overall though, Sweet Tooth is a fantastic series for anyone, especially fans of mysteries and great characters.
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As mentioned above, it is incredibly easy to dive into the world of Sweet Tooth. The comic starts with some worldbuilding. Readers are introduced to a dystopian world where human/animal hybrids are the only people immune to a plague that has already devastated the world’s population. This opens up questions about how this plague started, why the hybrids exist, and where society will go from here. It is a simple way to hook the reader in and push them to learn more.
Then, as some of these mysteries are resolved, newly introduced mysteries become even more fantastic. Readers learn that somehow Sweet Tooth was born before all other hybrids, then that his father’s seemingly crazed ramblings may be revealing the road to deeper truths, then that the entire plague and creation of hybrids is a sort of vengeance being inflicted on humanity by ancient gods. The transition from a grounded and standard post-apocalyptic narrative to something bizarre and entirely unique is accomplished expertly.
Despite how well this is all executed, the human element within the narrative is easily its strongest point. From the very start, Sweet Tooth and Jeppard make a compelling pair. Their father/son relationship is built over years of hurt and comes with a series of complications. Watching them move past their problems, begin to grow as individuals, and accept each other is incredibly satisfying. The character development here is wonderful to see and gives the reading experience plenty of emotion.
My only complaint with Sweet Tooth is that its moral message is somewhat poorly executed. The series seems to generally revolve around how modern technologies hurt the human spirit and the environment in disastrous ways. Then the comic suggests that the society built by the hybrids, at the comic’s conclusion, is better and will persevere. However, the society built by the hybrids still features rudimentary buildings and generally looks like a prototypical city. In general the comic’s message here feels a little underwhelming, especially considering how well everything else is written.
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Art
I have to admit, I wasn’t sure how I felt about the artwork in Sweet Tooth at first. Jeff Lemire’s work is very uniquely stylized in a way that looks a bit odd at first glance. However, I quickly grew to love the visuals in this series and found them to be an excellent complement to the story being told. Lemire gives each character and location a sense of identity, an identity that sets it apart from everything else. His work also handles character’s emotions well, clearly displaying what characters are feeling in a way that is obvious. Then, on top of all of this, José Villarrubia’s colors perfectly capture the mood of each scene. All together, these factors really help with the character-driven portion of the read, something that is integral to the comic’s success.
In addition, the unique approach to structure adds to the comic’s visual appeal. Page structures can shift and change depending on what is required by the story. Some pages are straightforward and simply show what is happening, others take a more unique route and take on a visual style that helps emphasize what the characters are going through, and others appear standard but contain unorthodox panels that highlight a specific action or feeling. Even the inclusion of guest artwork from Matt Kindt fits perfectly within the narrative of the series, helping to define a flashback storyline as separate from the rest of the work. All of this makes for a better reading experience in an already good series.
Continuity
Sweet Tooth is a standalone series that does not cross over into other comics. For information on exactly how the series progresses see our “Sweet Tooth Reading Order”.
Some plotlines from the Sweet Tooth series continue on in Sweet Tooth: The Return.