Review: Babyteeth #4
Donny Cates, Gary Brown and Mark Englert continue to bring the house down with Babyteeth #4. In this issue, “The Prairie Wolf” comes to call as Heather and Sadie struggle to find a sustainable food source for hell-spawn Clark. Sadie has finally revealed that Clark does, in fact, have a father, but when Heather goes to find him, she gets way more than she bargained for.
What makes Babyteeth unique is the narrator. Main character Sadie tells the whole story in hindsight to her child, which means we get the tale in jumbled bits and pieces as she is admittedly a horrible storyteller. Well, perhaps just horrible at telling the story in order—otherwise, Sadie’s storytelling creates a world that Clark is probably lucky not to remember, as his life is constantly in danger.
The blood-sucking twist is an old one, but just like the teenage pregnancy in the first issue, it doesn’t take center stage and instead the problems lie in trying to find enough blood to sustain Clark’s voracious appetite. I continue to appreciate the fact that Babyteeth hasn’t stopped to make Sadie feel like a bad person, because she isn’t. In fact even Heather, who has broken the law and may or may not be a sociopath, is still treated like a human being because she IS one. All the characters, whether assassin or super-dad or mother to the devil himself, all show their humanity in one way or another, which, I think, is what makes Babyteeth something special.
Brown and Englert keep the pace break-neck with their sketchy art style and demonic color palette, and Cates’ story keeps up well. Each issue ends in the perfect place to keep readers on the edge of their seat, eager to find out the answer to a question they may not have even had on page one.
And, really. What’s the deal with the demon raccoon?
Story: Donny Cates Art: Gary Brown
Colors: Mark Englert Letters: Taylor Esposito
Story: 9.0 Art: 10 Overall: 9.5 Recommendation: Buy, add to pull list, enjoy.
Aftershock Comics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review
Writer Brian Wood and artists Gary Brown and Dave McCaig team up for the all-new, ongoing Viking tale in Black Road, which was first announced during last year’s Image Expo and will be launching from Image Comics this April.
