The Underwater Welder, by Jeff Lemire

The Underwater Welder, by Jeff Lemire, 224 pages

Jack Joseph is an underwater welder. One day on the job, he has an out of time experience, and continues to keep "losing time."  Trying to discover the mystery of his father's disappearance and running away from the pressures of his own impending fatherhood, Jack must reconcile his past with his future.  I thought this was a good reflection on how our memories of events and people are not always how they really were, and how we have to forgive ourselves in order to move on in life.

Animal Armies (Sweet Tooth 3), by Jeff Lemire

Animal Armies (Sweet Tooth 3), by Jeff Lemire, 144 pages

In this third installment in the Sweet Tooth series, Gus, the hybrid deer child, is able to escape from the militia base- twice- in search of a safe place for hybrids.  Jepperd learns the devastating truth about the child he thought dead, and Abbott is still a really creepy, scary guy.  This would be even better as an omnibus, because the story is so engaging.  The reader still doesn't know the secret to Gus's "birth," but a trip to Alaska in the next volume might provide answers.

In Captivity, Sweet Tooth #2, by Jeff Lemire

In Captivity, Sweet Tooth #2, by Jeff Lemire, 144 pages

At the end of volume 1, we find that Jeppard has given Gus to what looks like an army base in exchange for a duffle bag.  Volume 2 reveals what was in the bag, and how Jeppard grew to be a mercenary.  Meanwhile, Gus finds that he is not the only hybrid child, and that their fate is to be experimented upon and dissected in order to discover the secret to surviving the plague.  But the doctor soon realizes that Gus is very special, and might hold the secret to the origin of the plague.

Sweet Tooth Vol 1: Out of the Deep Woods, by Jeff Lemire

Sweet Tooth Vol 1: Out of the Deep Woods, by Jeff Lemire, 128 pages

Graphic novel fans might know Lemire for his Essex County series.  Sweet Tooth has some of the same wild, imaginative, secretive feel to it, but it's different.  Gus is a hybrid boy- half deer, half human, raised secretly by his religious father in the deep woods and taught to shun strangers.  When Gus's father dies, he is left to fend for himself against hunters, the military, and his own naivety; the reader is just as much in the dark as to what disaster killed so much of the world's population and what awaits Gus outside of the deep woods. A good read- I'm looking forward to the rest of the series.