I missed it first time around, so consider this a belated chance to read Matt Santori-Griffith’s essay connecting Jeff Lemire’s Sweet Tooth and Jack Kirby’s Kamandi in terms of apocalyptic anthropomorphism:
It’s only in Jepperd’s conscionable return to rescue Gus — and Gus’s own brush with the necessity of violence to save his friend’s life — that we begin to experience human (or hybrid) nature as it truly is. Good and evil are a choice we make in the world, and no one’s inherent character is decided by their genetic make-up or species. But while it may be in our power to make that choice, the consequence of choosing a world of violence has repercussions that remain unavoidable. As the remaining humans become more and more desperate to destroy Gus and his friends, the inevitability of their deserved demise becomes ever more clear. If Kamandi is a parable of man’s ability to conquer his own destiny, Sweet Tooth may very well be that of man’s ability to seal it.
I’d never made the connection between the two projects before, but once you read this, it seems especially obvious. Go check it out.
