Glutton for Punishment: Reviewing "Chew Volume 1: Taster’s Choice"
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
Our 19102 Review recaps books, no matter when they were published, with Philly connections.
Chew Volume 1: Taster’s Choice
John Layman and illustrator Rob Guillory
(Image Comics, 2009, 128 pp)
When Philadelphia Police officer-turned Food and Drug Administration agent Tony Chu politely turns down a meal, he’s not trying to be rude — eating can be a nightmare for him. Chu is one of three known cibopaths in the world, and has that classic #CibopathProblem where he learns the horrible details, histories and secrets of whatever he eats — including people.
It’s a plot device that gives Chew Volume 1: Taster’s Choice, a collection of the first five Chew issues, its distinct flavor in the realm of pulp detective comics. Writer John Layman knows where the line into overt camp territory is drawn, and dips just far enough past it.
Chew’s America is one where poultry sale and consumption is illegal under the guise of a killer bird flu. Chicken black markets have sprung up around the country, and Chu finds himself at the whim of the FDA, forced to eat his way through fingers, faces and other human remains to uncover potential government conspiracies.
Chew is not an overtly pretty comic. Rob Guillory’s illustrations are angular, dizzying and nauseous — but it works in Chew’s grease-filmed world.
Midway through the collection, Chu is given orders to arrest food critic Amelia Mintz in her newspaper’s office. When the terrorist group E.G.G. bursts in and demands the paper publish its manifesto at gunpoint, the critic reads her latest negative review aloud. They can’t stop vomiting. (Mintz is a saboscrivner — she can describe food to a point of inducing the taste in the listener.) In a gorgeously sickening half-page panel, Chu watches in awe, doused in moss-green puke. He’s in love.
