Sweet Tooth #25 – Review

By: Jeff Lemire (writer, artist & colorist), Jose Villarubia (colorist), Pat Brosseau (letters) & Mark Doyle (editor)

The Story: Choices for the good guys: stay in the dam or continue to Alaska?

The Review: This wasn’t the best story cycle of Sweet Tooth, so I’m kinda glad that its over and we’re on to new and hopefully better things.  It wasn’t remotely “bad”, but it lacked for those punch-in-the-guts moments that have characterized the earlier stories.

It was interesting seeing the protagonists arguing about what to do next and that ties into a common theme of post-apocalyptic fiction: Where to rebuild?  All of these stories have their moments of action where the good guys are running for their lives from mutants or the bandits of the wastelands, but once they get some room to breathe, it becomes a question of what to do next.  Is this a good spot to settle down?  Might it be better somewhere else?  Search for “the cure,” or just hunker down and make the best of things where you are?  Us readers are so used to living in a world where we have instant answer to questions like, “What temperature is it in Anchorage, Alaska right now?” that you have to really think about what you’d do in their situation where you don’t know anything.  The dam is a pretty sweet place to hang out and a LOT better than anything else they’ve found.  But, splitting the group wouldn’t be a bad idea from a storytelling standpoint because this comic worked better with a smaller cast.

Of course, the other staple of post-apocalypse fiction rears its head too towards the end of issue: If you’re going to try to live in the best spot, you’d best be armed to the teeth because other people – nasty people – will come knocking.  The last page really augurs good things for the next story cycle.

The only disappointment I have with the story is that we still don’t really know much about the dude living in the dam.  I guess that is to be expected because we don’t really know much about most of the characters, but I was expecting a little more information.  I’m unsure whether to be truly disappointed about this or glad that Lemire didn’t take the easy path of having a cliché moment where the dude laughs (“BWAH HA HA! style, of course) and springs a trap on our protagonists.

I really loved the art in this issue as Lemire went for watercolors during an extended dream sequence by Gus.  I remember seeing Lemire tweeting about this a few months ago, but really loved seeing it.  This painting makes Lemire’s distinctive linework even more Lemire-esque because it is so splotchy.  Lemire is definitely on my list of “must acquire” for some original art.

Conclusion: Another strong issue that wraps up a pretty uneventful arc and foretells more exciting things in the next bit of the story.  One wonders how long we’ll have Sweet Tooth with Lemire writing a few series of the New 52 at DC.  Hopefully he can stick with it because he has to have his plate full with writing 3 ongoing comics and drawing one of them too.  Does he ever sleep?

Grade: B

-Dean Stell

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