Chew: Just Desserts

At this point, the word about Chew is unanimous: it’s a great comic that everyone should at least try. The volume in question here is the third, entitled “Just Desserts.” John Layman and Rob Guillory have ironed out any wrinkles (wait--were there any to begin with?) and turned Chew into one of Image’s best titles. Little, tiny bit of backstory: Chew stars Tony Chu, a cibopathic FDA official who routinely deals with problems arising from the illegal consumption of chicken meat. Poultry was banned forever because there was once a particularly bad strain of illness associated with it.

Oh, and by the way...what is a cibopath? Someone with a pretty special ability. Tony eats something and instantly gets a psychic impression of where the food came from and everything that has happened to it. So if he eats an apple, he might imagine that nice little apple orchard where a family went picking together on a nice Sunday afternoon. Or, well, he might ingest a “blood sample” of a murdered corpse and find out all of the grisly details. That’s what life is like for Tony Chu.

A good amount of space in “Just Desserts” is given to developing the relationship between Tony and his girlfried Amelia Mintz. Now Amelia happens to have some special abilities herself...Layman has given her the title of saboscrivener, meaning that she is a food writer, just like a bunch of other people who have tried their hand at that particular kind of writing, but unlike others Amelia’s writing is so evocative and descriptive that readers actually get a taste of the food that is being written about. So doesn’t it sound like these people were made for each other?

I think that what really leapt out at me at first about this book was the way that the stories are constructed. The first chapter is just great: it’s an example of “start at the end” storytelling, in which everything else leads up to that final moment spoiled at the beginning, but I don’t ever recall seeing such effective use of thousands of years passing in a twenty-two page comic before. Another highlight story involves the raiding of company headquarters of the inventors of Poult-Plus, an artificial chicken substitute that is “Fricken’ Delicious!” I don’t want to spoil anything, but there’s a pretty good reason why this stuff is so appetizing.

Chew is a comic that is really easy to enjoy. It’s one of those amazingly well-rounded comics that just seems to do it all. Sure, the scale might be tipped onto the side of humor, but there are some serious moments and ideas behind the book. What is always obvious about Chew is that the creators are having a blast and reveling in the artistic synergy that they’ve found. Chew: “Just Desserts” benefits from the high production quality that Image is known for, and everything just looks great. How many funny notes can Guillory hide on every page?