Number 78- Sweet Tooth- Jeff Lemire

It's a shame this is the TV Tie in cover, but it was cheap. This is a collected edition of the first 12 issues of the original comic and covers much of the same ground as the first season of the tv series. 

This is the most definitive apocalypse I've read yet from Jeff Lemire, who also takes on the artistic duties this time around. Most of humanity has been wiped out by a disease, just known as The Illness. meanwhile, the potential future of the species, the newborn babies, have not been quite normal. 

Since the Outbreak 7 years previously, every baby born has been a hybrid, part human, part animal.  Sweet tooth (aka Gus, our central character) himself is part deer. With no humans born and the Illness coming round and killing more and more 

The TV series follows several plot strands simultaneously, only winding them together very late on.  That's very typical in Jeff Lemire's comics, but doesn't actually happen here. 

For the first two thirds of this, there is only the one storyline, Gus being found in the woods by Big Man and led to safety. When Singh appears in this volume, he is far from the sympathetic character we know in the TV show.

There are other marked differences between the stories, whether the extra characters in the TV show will be introduced in Book 2 remains to be seen.

I wasn't a fan of the artwork initially but it definitely grew on me, especially when it started incorporating the weird tricks with layout that characterize Lemire's comics. The style looks rough and quite ugly but it's consistent and the emotions are clear on character faces, even the animals.  The panels where Sweet Tooth is hypnotized are particularly effective. the story is deeply personal and emotional at the same time as wildly apocalyptic. Lemire does seem to pull this trick off nicely, and here it's particularly well done. I felt genuinely sorry for all the central cast by the end of this compendium.

Book 2 is on my shopping list for when i pop into town tomorrow.