Comic Info
Comic Name: Sweet Tooth: The Return
Publisher: DC Comics/Black Label
Writer: Jeff Lemire
Artist: Jeff Lemire
# of Issues: 6
Release Date: 2021
Sweet Tooth: The Return #1 Variant
Reprints Sweet Tooth: The Return #1-6 (January 2021-June 2021). A special boy finds himself being raised in an underground cavern. He is daily subjected to shots and studies by Father who tells him that he has a purpose. The boy is haunted by visions of another boy like him named Gus and a man named Jepperd. When the boy tries to make an escape from the world he has grown up in, Father’s plans are headed to fruition…and humanity’s last stand could be coming!
Written and illustrated by Jeff Lemire, Sweet Tooth: The Return is a science-fiction fantasy comic book. A follow-up to Sweet Tooth which ended with Sweet Tooth Volume 6: Wild Game in 2013, the series was released on the DC Black Label imprint.
I loved the Sweet Tooth series. The story was creative and heartfelt. It was loaded with great characters and tense moments. Sweet Tooth: The Return throws you in the deep in if you read the original series…and a lot of the fun is trying to figure out what is happening and why it is happening along with the characters.
Sweet Tooth had a beginning and an end. You knew the entire life path of Gus and the idea that there is more to the Sweet Tooth story isn’t possible…but a character just like Gus leads this book. The boy later goes by Gus and shares Gus’s memories. The format of the comic oddly kind of matches the somewhat maligned Alien sequel Alien: Resurrection from 1997, but it doesn’t have the negatives that go with that film.
Sweet Tooth: The Return #6
The only problem with Sweet Tooth: The Return is that it feels like a beginning…and I don’t know that you are going to get anything new anytime soon or ever. The story throws a lot of information at the readers, establishes characters, and sets them off on a new adventure which would be interesting to see, but you don’t get to see it. The plot of the comic is the journey and not what happens afterwards.
Jeff Lemire’s art isn’t for everyone and those jumping on Sweet Tooth: The Return might not only be confused, but also might have a difficult time adjusting to Lemire’s art. I love it, but it did take me awhile and a good chunk of Sweet Tooth’s original run to get there. For me, Sweet Tooth: The Return is a nice revisiting of Lemire’s character designs, but newer readers might struggle.
Sweet Tooth: The Return makes sense. With renewed interest in Sweet Tooth due to the Netflix series, a return to the comic makes sense. Unfortunately, if a new reader went in to “explore Sweet Tooth” and ended up with Sweet Tooth: The Return, they would be hopelessly lost and ruin the fun and adventure of the first series…hopefully comic book store owners and others can guide new readers down the right path. It remains to be seen if we get to meet Gus again.
Related Links:
Sweet Tooth 1: Out of the Deep Woods
Sweet Tooth 4: Endangered Species
