Wednesday, 24 September 2014

So I Read Chew: Family Recipes

A 250 word (or less) review of Chew Vol. 8
by John Layman and Rob Guillory; Image Comics




This review will contain *SPOILERS*. For a clean review go here.


Chew is a comic about a detective who gets psychic impressions from everything he eats in a crazy universe that involves a poultry ban, a cannibal vampire, a cyborg game cock, and extraterrestrial Armageddons. It's a comic that is gloriously weird, but still compelling and accessible comics. Chew: Family Recipes brings the lens of the series back on Tony as he realises that his dead twin sister Toni had managed to leave him an amputated toe filled with important information. Tony's sister was cibovoyant, able to predict the future of any living thing she ingests. Sensing her own demise, she took steps to leave a fleshy clue for her cibopathic brother so she could equip him with important knowledge about his future from beyond the grave. Of course, this is Chew, so complications and hijinks ensue that are ridiculous and awesome. It's really business as usual for Chew and it's great. Which is actually pretty diverse business. I frequently see my favourite comics spaces try to mathematically quantify how diverse a particular comic is, to figure out whether a particular comic panders to a default audience or tries to represent a more realistic view of society. And Chew is actually pretty great about this: the protagonist of Chew is of Asian decent, his partner is a bisexual cyborg, and a significant portion of key characters are a demographically plausible mix of genders, sexual orientations, and ethnicities. So, I guess, come for the mad fun, stay for the thoughtful representation.


Word count: 249

Previously:
Chew Vol. 1-5
Chew Vol. 6
Chew Vol. 7

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