Chew No. 1
presents about as unappetizing a foray into four-color funnybooks as you could
ask for — even in our present ZAV (Zombie Age of Vampires). Tony Chu is a cop and
isn’t exactly a zombie, but he eats the face off a crook’s body in this issue
because, we are informed, he is cibopathic, which means he gleans, by
intestinal osmosis, information from whatever he eats — where it came from and
how it became food (who killed the cow or laid the egg or plucked the apple
from the tree). By cannibalizing the crook’s corpse, he learns that the dead
guy had killed several young women, their names, and the location of their
remains, thereby solving a clutch of missing persons cases. When Chu’s boss
learns how he solved these cases, he suspends Chu, but, at the last minute, Chu is hired by the Food and Drug Administration, where,
we assume, he’ll spend ensuing issues of this title. The first five issues have
already been gathered into a single graphic novel volume, Taster’s Choice (nice), due out this year.
The whole
idea of a guy chewing the face off another human being — for whatever noble
purpose — is repulsive enough to turn one’s stomach away from this title, but, at
the same macabre time, it’s an intriguing notion, and writer John Layman stages the grossest moment
so comedically — enough to seduce the reader into wondering how Chu will fare
(pardon the expression) in his future endeavors. And Rob Guillory’s visuals further dissipate the grossly unsavory aura
of the concept with exaggerative abstract anatomy that turns a revolting idea
into absurdist comedy.
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