Sweet Tooth #4, in which Jeff Lemire blinked at Furry culture and drew one of the most effective rifle butt beatings I’ve read recently, definitely kept things tense. Sweet Tooth’s surrogate father maintained his aging Clint Eastwoody anti-hero rep that’s been simmering thus far, and still looks like he could turn into the book’s big villain at any moment. The events in the issue didn’t seem to be all too important in the scheme of the developing story, but it was an effective vignette moment in the boy/man pair’s ongoing adventure.
I’ve already noted that I’m pretty well in for the long haul on this series, and Sweet Tooth made the top ten books of 2009 list that I submitted to CBR for their “Best 100 Comics of 2009” marathon, so I’m past the point of needing the series to win my affections. That’s kind of nice, because I feel myself judging the chapters now by how well they play off what has been established and where they take the story. From that perspective, #4 didn’t pull off any veils or twist the plot in any unsurprising ways. It mostly read like a pit stop on the road, though for what it was by itself, the sequences and character foci were engaging. Every month can’t be a game-changer, Lemire didn’t necessarily need this one to be.