Sweet Tooth is a Vertigo Comics series created by Jeff Lemire. Several years ago, a plague known as the Affliction decimated the entire human population; since then, the only children born are human-animal hybrids, who are being hunted down. Gus, a human-deer hybrid, was isolated from society by his religious father and longs to escape his home to explore the land beyond the woods.
After Gus' father dies from the Affliction, strange men come to capture him. Gus is rescued by a mysterious and violent man named Jepperd, who promises to take him to the Preserve, a safe haven for hybrids.
It was followed by a six issue series, Sweet Tooth: The Return that was published under the DC Black Label.
The series was adapted for Netflix; the first season was released on June 4th, 2021. Two more seasons followed, with the third and final season released in 2024.
Not to be confused with a certain ice cream truck of mass destruction.
Sweet Tooth provides examples of:
- Affectionate Nickname: Jepperd starts calling Gus "Sweet Tooth" after he gives Gus a chocolate bar. The nickname sticks to the rest of the series.
- After the End: The series is set in a world where a vast majority of the world's population has died because of a plague called the Affliction. Cities are ruined or abandoned, and what's left of humanity is concentrated on small settlements.
- Anti-Hero: Jepperd starts off the series as an amoral killer whose one interest is protecting Gus. He eventually grows out of it.
- Anyone Can Die: Several prominent characters die such as Jepperd's wife, Louise, Lucy, Jepperd, and Abbot.
- Arc Words: "God? There is no God here," in various permutations.
- Bait-and-Switch: In the flashbacks in the "In Captivity" arc, Louise desperately wants to tell Jepperd something, but he refuses. The audience is led to believe that she's caught the Affliction, but she reveals that she's pregnant.
- Big Bad: Abbot.
- Big Damn Heroes: The first issue ends with Gus cornered by two hunters, when Jepperd arrives by shooting one of them through the head.
- The Big Guy: Jepperd.
- Black Comedy Burst: Occasionally. For instance, early on a high school football field currently full of corpses declares itself the "Home of the Vultures".
- Book Ends: Of the story as a whole. In the flashback to the 19th century, the Inuit deities, or whatever sort of Precursors they are, are buried in a secluded cavern that none but the shaman can visit and are intended to be forgotten. By the end, Gus - now essentially the shaman - has the last humans, the Precursors of the hybrids, buried in a sunny open field and brings the people there every year to remember it.
- Character Development: As Jeff Lemire puts it, Jepperd starts off as an amoral killer, develops into a reluctant father figure, and then selflessly sacrifices himself saving Gus. Gus starts off completely innocent, becomes hardened over their journey, and becomes a father figure for the younger hybrids.
- Deadly Distant Finale: The final issue shows how the hybrids rebuild society and ends with Gus as a very old man. The last thing he sees is Jepperd as he dies.
- Death Seeker: Jepperd's initial motivation isn't for money or survival; he just wants to find a place to die.
- Died in Your Arms Tonight: Jepperd dies in Gus's arms.
- Dreaming of Things to Come: The series begins with Gus describing his recurring nightmares of a big man chasing him. The big man is Jepperd, who meets Gus by the end of the first issue.
- Driving Question: A downplayed version. One of the main plots is the cause of the plague, but the series concentrates more on the growing friendship between Gus and Jepperd.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Jepperd dies after a brutal fight with Abbot, but Gus and the other hybrids succeed in rebuilding society.
- Easily Forgiven: Averted. Jepperd DOES come back to rescue Gus (and the other hybrids) after he'd abandoned him to Abbot, but Gus is understandably upset and refuses to forgive him until Jepperd risks his life to save Gus from a bear.
- Fingore: In the climax of "Animal Armies," Johnny shoots off all of Abbot's left fingers after Abbot threatens him.
- Half-Human Hybrid: All of the children born after The Affliction. Gus, the main character, has deer-like features.
- Humans Are Bastards: The series pushes this angle a lot, but doesn't really go into detail - almost all the cruelty by humans we see is done by individual villains or simply the result of a desperate struggle to say alive in a post-apocalyptic world, and even then it's balanced out by good people. This may be the result of it being narrated by an elderly Gus as a morality tale to his descendants, and he hasn't known a kinder world. The ambiguity may be why they ultimately accept the last humans as they die, and even then Gus doesn't elaborate on what man's mistakes actually were.
- Incurable Cough of Death: The primary symptom of the Affliction:
- Gus' father is introduced coughing up blood and dies within the same issue.
- Lucy starts coughing up blood, making her realize that she's caught the Affliction.
- Interface Spoiler: The first Deluxe Edition collection contains the original pitch to the series...which spoils the ending of the series. The editors are nice enough to put a warning that the spoiler-adverse should read the other two Deluxe Edition collections first before returning to read the pitch though.
- Intergenerational Friendship: Gus and Jepperd. Gus is 9, and Jepperd looks around 40.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Throughout the comic series, Abbot ambushes another character with a knife while distracting them three times. He's ultimately killed by Gus doing the same thing with the same knife.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: It's never made totally clear what the Affliction was actually caused by: the vengeance of the Inuit physical gods for having their resting places disturbed, the magical explanation which everyone ultimately comes to believe, or as is subtly implied some sort of dormant disease found within the bodies of said "gods" buried in the Alaskan ice and released when the sarcophagus was opened. The prophetic dreams Gus has seem to imply the former, but an early line about the plague possibly being airborne might point to the latter.
- Morality Pet: Gus serves as one for Jepperd.
- Noble Savage: The Inuit encountered during the flashback arc, referred to in almost those exact words, and barely averted by the hybrid society at the very end of the story. Although their shamanism is very similar, they're shown to have adopted their own sort of hybrid of Native American and Western customs and aesthetics.
- No-Dialogue Episode: Played with in Issue 12. The characters don't have any spoken dialogue with each other, but Doctor Singh has an ongoing narration throughout the issue.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Nearly every fight that Jepperd is involved in is usually just him beating the crap out of his opponent.
- Obfuscating Disability: The man calling himself Walter Fish eventually reveals that he killed the real Fish and took his identity, along with his crutches, which he uses to appear crippled.
- Painting the Medium: Jeff Lemire was very fond of experimenting in various issues, including telling two simultaneous stories, which were separated by one story not having any dialogue while the other did, making a storybook type issue by not having any speech bubbles and having the issue presented sideways, and changing his art style to indicate dream sequences.
- The Plague: The Affliction, which decimated the entire human population. Lucy eventually gets infected and dies.
- Precursors: The original animal-hybrid beings buried in strange sarcophagi in a hidden cavern under the Alaskan ice. The local Inuit believe them to be their gods, now deceased in physical form, but whether this is true or if they were something else is left ambiguous.
- Public Domain Character: Tekkeitsertok, Inuit god of caribou and caribou hunting, whose reincarnation Gus allegedly is.
- Reluctant Mad Scientist: Doctor Singh legitimately wants to find a cure for The Affliction and is shown to be willing to experiment on the hybrids. However, his methods are only harsh because of the pressure placed on him by Abbot.
- The Three Faces of Adam: Gus, ultimately. He spends the vast majority of the story as The Hunter, a young boy who has to follow his mysterious calling and learn to survive in the harsh world; for a short time in the last couple issues, we see him as The Lord, a chief of the new hybrid society who rules with mercy; and for the last few pages he is The Prophet, an old man looked up to by his own and the other descendants of the tribe and gifted with insight about how the world was and why they perform the rituals they do.
- They Would Cut You Up: Gus's father strongly opposes any attempt by Gus to see the rest of the world because of this reason. While Gus is never vivisected, the facility run by the Militia has some hybrids cut open.
- Wham Line: From Abbot to Jepperd: There is one thing I lied to you about. Your child...your baby boy..your baby boy didn't die. He's still alive!
- The Worf Effect: Jepperd receives a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown from Abbot during the flashback sequence of the second arc in order to establish Abbot as a credible threat.
