Baby Teeth (One-Shot)

Let me say a few words about the short comic entitled 'Baby Teeth' for a moment. First-- just as the author warns before it starts-- this is a story that contains violence, gore and blood, horror, knives and guns, and graphic death. However, the art style being more abstract than the story's cover image really means that some weight is subtracted from the gore and blood, and even, to a degree, of that of the graphic death (although the nature of the setting and the plot also, each, subtract some of that weight). Those without specific triggers for it will also surely be used, in this century (or the last one, for that matter), to stories containing knives and blood and, just as sadly, violence. This leaves us, then, with the horror. This is a story about a world set in the future, after some apocalypse. Three children exist at the start of the story. There are also apparently "distortions." Their nature is left unclear, but we get some evidence of the terrible effects that they can cause. The real horror of this story, though, is the setting itself-- setting always means place, and time, but it can also involve a cultural setting, and this 12-page short offers a powerful example of how cultural setting can be used for horror. We don't even get much about the culture of the people who are portrayed in this story, but what we get shows a world that is very, very bleak-- those acquainted with THE ROAD, by writer Cormac McCarthy, will already know what I'm getting at. So 'Baby Teeth' gives the reader a world that honestly is arguably more bleak than that of McCarthy's novel in question, and also, simultaneously, one in which not all characters have completely given up hope.