When I glanced upon the first issue's first few electronic pages, I wondered: Will Sweet Tooth taste of blandness? You see, I worried that this completed series about an antlered boy was one of peculiarity for eccentricity's sake despite the marvelous art that masquerades as one of simplicity. Yet I scolded my nascent assessment of the deer child story...only to be utterly disappointed...that I almost dismissed this series! To my delightful surprise, I discovered that Sweet Tooth is one of my favorite stories, graphic novel or otherwise. There are a couple sequences which weren't to my preference, places where an unnamed and unseen narrator takes the storytelling reins from the characters. Furthermore, the execution of this creative decision lends a feeling of rising from the characters to a bird's eye view of their experiences while being sped along an otherwise transportive journey. Yet the narrative and characters are so enrapturing that the emotive adventure cannot be dampened by those two shorthanded segments. Anyways, this thematically rich series indeed proposes answers to the driving mystery of how Gus ended up with antlers (which is but one aspect of the enigma) before it leans heavily into a multi-layered yet easily ascertainable mythology and mind-blowingly unique solution without cutting off other possibilities. Yet more importantly, Sweet Tooth is an achingly beautiful human narrative which fleshes out almost every featured character while organically bringing them to the same prominence as the initially sole protagonist. This series is one which embraces the necessity of hope and perseverance yet melancholy, tragedy, and fear are not shortchanged; Tragedy and triumph coexist, a development which prevents Sweet Tooth from being superficially inspirational. I entreat you to read Sweet Tooth as soon as you are able. - Reviewed by C.A. Nicholas. A Bonus Recommendation: I Hate Fairyland.
This is a wonderfully cathartic black comedy series which lampoons children's fairytale tropes, including cutesy aspects and saccharine happily ever afters. There's a definitive ending of sorts to the 20 issue comic book series as well so that's another plus (it can be quite tiring trying to keep up with neverending series after all).
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