In Sweet Tooth we meet a frightened boy with a strange deformity. He’s got a nice pair of antlers growing right out of his melon (think Joe Hill’s Horns, and then think… nothing like that… really) and that’s quite obviously a problem with regard to fitting into society comfortably. His father is old and ill and he too is petrified by the thought of his son being forced to face a dangerous world.

It’s a melancholy setup. And then it heads straight for chilling, disconcerting territory. The boy’s father dies. He’s left to fend for himself, but he almost has that chance taken away one day when he wanders into the woods, smack dab into a pair of savage hunters who aim to slaughter the boy.

Moments before this sweet little lad meets his end, one of the hunters’ head explodes in a mist of blood, brain and bone. A stranger stands at the ready, prepared to make his next move. But what will that be, and will that gun of his see more immediate action?

While I’ve given you plenty of details, they’re really not spoilerish in nature. The details I’ve given you all really serve as a primer of sorts. This story clearly doesn’t begin barreling forward until issue two, so don’t sweat the info you’ve now read about the book.

Jeff Lemire’s far-out tale is magnetic, to say the very least. He’s gifted the masses a book that stands alone in an occupied field of creativity. It just doesn’t get much stranger than this. It doesn’t get much more addictive, either. The man has done what few ever manage, and that’s create an atypical, daring and unpredictable story that sucks in you from the first word. It’s genius.

I’ve already gone out of my way to beef my digital collection up with the first 20 issues, and you can bet it won’t take long to blow through those twice over. This is a book to chase down and clutch with all of your might.

Order it right here.

Rating: 5/5