You could say that Sweet Tooth starts where The Road ends. The latter story follows a father and son travelling through a post-apocalyptic landscape and finishes when the father dies and the son carries on with a new guardian he hopes he can trust. Sweet Tooth starts with a similar situation, the young boy in the charge of a mysterious man who promises a haven beyond the forest where he’s always dwelt, away from whatever apocalypse has visited the world.

Only, The Road and Sweet Tooth, for all their similarities, are worlds apart too. Cormac McCarthy’s book-cum-film is an established modern classic by an author at the top of his game. Jeff Lemire has made a small but perfectly formed impact in the world of comics with previous work for what amounts to a boutique publisher, and Sweet Tooth is his first ongoing series with Vertigo, part of Warner Brothers — he’s still in the early days of his career.

McCarthy’s tale dodges the label science fiction in the same curious way that 1984 does — it’s a fable for our times. But one clear choice by Jeff Lemire puts his work in the realm of the fantastic for most readers — he gives his young protagonist antlers. And — like Wolverine’s claws, or Dracula’s teeth — those accoutrements define him as being part of genre fiction as far as a general audience is concerned.

In practice, there’s clear tonal consistency between Lemire’s work here and his earlier more overtly naturalistic stories. The story is in large part concerned with childhood and family secrets, and the artwork and writing both border on the archetypal…or naive, depending how you want to look at it. At any rate, the young hero’s antlers in practice make this no more science fictional or fantastic than the stories of Ray Bradbury, another creator whose relationship with genre is interesting.

Though it’s set in the future, the story has the feel more of a fable than science fiction. And the pace and style further support that conclusion. You could sum up the story thus: ‘a mysterious stranger takes a young misfit from the forest where he lived with his father to a place described as a haven for those of his kind’. And that’s what happens, and takes fives issues of a comic to unfold.

Clearly, we’re involved in a different kind of storytelling than the model used by many comics creators. Titles like X-Men rely on information-heavy narratives with plenty of opportunity for drama and melodrama. They thrive on conflict and exposition, with the plot swinging this way and that following breathless revelation after breathless revelation. Which is fine when you’re in the mood for that kind of thing, just as Big Beat (remember that?) is fun to listen to when you’re wanting something kinetic and splashy.

Just as Frank Sinatra rewards a closer listening than Pendulum, so do some stories benefit from a gentler kind of attention. Sweet Tooth is the antithesis of the crossover event-driven comics mainstream, a small still pool to their raging New York intersections, and Out of the Deep Woods, the recently released first collection, is something to be relished when you’re in a mood for something subtle and atmospheric.

Oh, the story has its share of incident — and even gunfire if you’re concerned about missing that food group in your entertainment diet — but fundamentally it’s a very different kind of comic than the sort Mark Millar concocts mostly with the aim of getting another film deal. And that’s to be encouraged, at a time when so many people seem to be thinking of comics essentially as illustrated pitch documents that will secure them the attention of Hollywood.