Chew: Omnivore Edition, Volume 2

Just Desserts and Flambé
written by John Layman
art by Rob Guillory

In the elevator to Amelia Mintz's office floor at the Mercury Sun there's a memo posted:  "Vomit bags can be found near Amelia's desk.  —Mgmt" (Chew: Omnivore Edition, Volume 2: 61 [Chew #13: 7]).  Undoubtedly is a little (mostly) teasingly hostile office revenge for her nauseating reviews of D-grade restaurants in Taster's Choice, but it's also a nice anticipation for Colby's reaction to Tony and Amelia's kiss hello:  "Egad.  Where's a barf bag when ya need one?" (62 [8]).  Really, it's the little things.

Layman and Guillory have made a point to speckle their series with self-referential in-jokes, clever pop culture references (Fringe, in particular, is the gift that keeps on giving), and delightfully absurd background detail as a complement to the already delectable, bombastic physical humor, sardonic but often sweet dialogue, and often daffy plot action.

And John Colby is my favorite:

"Look, dickhead.  I just spent the better part of the morning convincing your current girlfriend you're not some sort of nutcase--  because you're holding on to the toe of your ex--who actually was a nutcase.  Don't go ruining all my hard work by starting a shit-fire--on our day off--with your family--who already hates you."  (Vol. 2: 121 [#15: 17])

He's simultaneously a loose cannon, who would fit comfortably in most rebel cop dramas, and one of the most personally intuitive and considerate characters in Chew.  Colby's defense of his partner Tony in his showdown with Savoy at Montero's mansion—and Tony's equally heartbreaking appreciation of his loyalty, holding his battered and unconscious body—exemplify just how strong a hold Layman has on his tonally expansive series.

Just Desserts is quite a personal departure for Chew's protagonist.  His romance with saboscrivener journalist Amelia Mintz is in its early blush, and his rivalry with former partner and rogue cibopath Mason Savoy returns to the fore.  But in the collision between Tony's compartmentalized lives, his family has to win:  bitter older sister Rosemary, her matchy-matchy husband Tang Shen, their children Chip and Bree Chu-Shen, Tony's effervescent twin sister Toni (Antonelle) Chu, older brother and black-market poultry cook Chow, transvestite—or transsexual—younger brother Harold (aka, Miso Honey), younger sister Sage, mother Bao, and grandfather Ong.  Their Thanksgiving dinner together is borderline epic, and not just because it ends with flaming alien writing across the sky, worthy every bit of Guillory's "Last Supper" spoof cover.  The biggest surprise, however, is Olive, Tony's very teenage daughter.  She's a surprise—and potentially a deal-breaking complication for their relationship—to Amelia, but in the moment of fear, staring into the fire-writing across the Thanksgiving sky, Tony, Amelia, and Olive find themselves holding hands with all the promise of a very real (if culinarily unconventional) family.

Ostensibly about the mysterious—perhaps alien—fiery message in the sky, Flambé explodes the poultry conspiracies even as it shies away from enforcement of the poultry prohibition with the apocalypse seemingly at hand.  Tony's new partner Caesar Valenzano is Savoy's old partner, and they're still in illicit cahoots; former FDA agent and self-destructing voresoph Daniel Migdalo has apparently eaten himself into perfect, genius understanding of the whole thing but flings himself out of his apartment lunging for breath mints; an angsty high-schooler with a new food power apparently takes down a space station studying zero-gravity food, including a gallsaberry targeted by the mysterious "vampire"; anti-prohibition revolutionaries making meteor-metal bullets; solar-mutated, zero-gravity babies conceived by NASA scientists in a panicked directive to save the human race during the avian flu pandemic; and an egg-worshipping cult with scripture in a mysterious language.

But in all of the potentially world-ending machinations, Flambé's most victorious turn comes from a death-wielding gamecock: "Concentrated mayhem.  Feathers, rage and hate. *P*O*Y*O*!!!*" (Vol. 2: 196 [#18: 21]).  He's taken down innumerable rooster peers, a fighting cock crime boss and his muscle, and now the army of bio-terrorist General Jontongjoo.

[unnamed]:  someone who can determine all the constituent ingredients (chemically) of a food dish only by its taste.

Voresoph:  someone whose intelligence is directly correlated with how much food he or she ingests.  The more one eats, the smarter one gets.

[unnamed]:  someone who can compose recipes that control other people.

Collects Chew #11-20

ISBN: 978-1607064268

Chew: Omnivore Edition, Volume 1

Taster's Choice and International Flavor
written by John Layman
art by Rob Guillory

Bold premise #1:  Protagonist is a law enforcement officer who gets psychic sensations from and about whatever he ingests—a so-called "cibopath"—and he uses this "talent" to solve crimes.  Often by cannibalizing victims and/or perpetrators, or sometimes their dead dogs.

Bold premise #2:  His partner, after being hit in the face with a butcher's knife chasing a serial-killer sous-chef, is rebuilt with half a cyborg face, complete with internal computer and laser eye.

Bold premise #3:  The world has suffered a catastrophic pandemic of bird flu that killed 23 million Americans, 116 million worldwide, leading most nations to institute a poultry prohibition.  Many, however, believe the flu to be a hoax and the prohibition to be a cover-up.

Bold premise #4:  In the wake of this disaster, a strange maybe-fruit seemingly from space, but tasting just like chicken, appears to fill the market demand.  This may or may not have something to do with a mysterious (and hedonistic) international space observatory tasked with studying a single planet.

Tony Chu's world would be oppressively bleak if it weren't so damn whimsical.  Don't get me wrong, Tony Chu suffers.  The only thing he can eat that doesn't assault him with psychic residue is beets.  Beets!  His job, which he's quite good at though his boss is nothing but caustic and bullying, requires that he regularly ingest dead people.  And those are the good days, since his boss also goes out of his way to assign Tony the most repellent cases.  But Layman and Guillory have cooked up a world so vibrant and absurd that even the macabre has a tone of glee.

Taster's Choice introduces the seedy underbelly of a post-pandemic city, complete with black-market poultry mobs, corrupt and licentious politicians, a commensurately empowered F.D.A., now the most powerful law enforcement agency in the country, and food terrorist organizations, believing the bird flu and poultry prohibitions to be little more than government conspiracy.  While each chapter bears some plot connection to those around it—and some resurface as exceedingly important in later arcs—Taster's Choice is primarily a story about the brief, but educational, partnership between rookie F.D.A. agent Tony Chu, formerly of the Philadelphia police department, and Mason Savoy, his powerful but portly mentor with a penchant for Victorian turns of circumlocution.

On the other hand, International Flavor immerses Tony into an international plot by a small island nation Yamapalu and its petite, bug-eyed governor to launch the gallsberry—a mysterious space fruit that tastes like chicken—into international cuisine, and he's kidnapping the world's most respected food experts, including chefs (like Tony's brother Chow) and food critics (like Amelia Mintz, a saboscrivener and Tony's crush), to make it happen.  There are multiple conspiracies, and Layman's constantly juggling a handful of storylines at once, but he never lets them drop.  The poultry muscle, primarly a mercenary named Caesar in the employ of faux-poultry tycoon Ray Jack Montero, is attempting to sabotage Yamapalu's governor and his emerging gallsberry industry; Chu is tracking down the space-fruit, but gets sidetracked chasing down a local murder over a prize cyborg gamecock named Poyo for the local fuzz, who ends up stealing him anyway; and one of the governor's kidnapped chefs, mute cibolocutor Fantanyeros, is rescued in a multi-front assault by the ominously named Vampire.

Cibopath: someone who feels a psychic sensation about whatever he or she ingests, except beets.

Saboscrivener: someone who can write about food so accurately and vividly that it conveys the sense of taste to whomever reads it.

Cibolocutor: someone who can communicate through food.

Collects Chew #1-10

ISBN:  978-1607062936