Sweet Tooth: The Return by Jeff Lemire Review

The remnants of humanity have been forced underground while the hybrids rule the surface. But a mad holy man plots to alter the virus that nearly wiped out humanity by placing it in an unsuspecting hybrid and sending them to the surface world. That hybrid is a little boy called Gus…

Jeff Lemire returns to the world of Sweet Tooth for one more book to take advantage of the publicity surrounding Netflix’s recent Sweet Tooth adaptation. And, The Return, like so many creators going back to the well years after it dried up (looking at you Garth Ennis’ Dear Becky), is an utterly worthless addendum to the original series.

I suppose SPOILERS for the rest of this review but I’m not recommending this one to anyone, fans or otherwise - it’s another Jeff Lemire dud, in a long string of them.

This story has the most tenuous connection to the series too. Somehow Gus is cloned from his remains 300 YEARS LATER - I mean, what?! It seems to be so that Lemire can do a reimagining/retelling of the first book - but why?? Is Lemire really that out of ideas?

Nothing about the story wasn’t the least bit convincing and is just full of the laziest details. There’s a stock crazy cult leader with a convoluted, bonkers plan. Somehow, even though it seems like humanity’s on its last legs, he manages to create a flourishing, futuristic society in a conveniently-located giant cave replete with floating jellyfish robots (straight outta Star Wars), and a lab that can clone people from long dead tissue, change viruses, and morph people into hybrids - all of which he just knows how to do, naturally.

And the people just submit to his rule - why? Because he has jellyfish robots and kids with masks? Except even weakling Gus is able to knock out a robot with his bare hands and the kids are just kids - why aren’t the adults knocking them down?! Because religion, right? It doesn’t make sense. Why live under these awful conditions? They came from above ground, so they saw how the hybrids don’t actually rule over the humans, and they didn’t die from being above ground, so why are they following an obvious lunatic and living underground?!?!

So the story is: a madman, who is in charge of society for contrivance’s sake, and who also has the scientific knowledge to clone the long-dead and alter viruses, plans to wipe out a threat that isn’t really a threat, while hiding out from no-one for reasons that only make sense to him, and achieve his idiotic goal, which may or may not work. It’s just layers and layers of irrelevance - what’s interesting about any of this drivel?!

I really hated this boring, stupid, pointless comic. Hacky writing, B-movie-level storytelling - a plain baffling and useless add-on to an otherwise decent series, if you’re thinking about checking out Sweet Tooth: The Return, save yourself the tedium and don’t bother.