Chew: Taster's Choice - A Review

Chew: Taster's Choice
volume one
John Layman&Rob Guillory


Let me start off by saying this was a well written and nicely illustrated graphic novel. Even so, I was seriously grossed out by this book. This book is not for the faint of stomach. *shudder*


Tony Chu is cibopathic which essentially means that he can get impressions from whatever he eats. That's bad enough when applied to normal food. I mean knowing how the cow who provided your beef felt when it was slaughtered is awful enough but this lovely creator team took Mr. Chu's ability to the places most wouldn't want to go. Poor Agent Chu has to eat his way to solving crimes. Which involves eating decomposing fingers, dead people, dead dogs... the list goes on. I have nothing but sympathy for Agent Chu.


Regardless of the gross out factor involved in reading this book I still enjoyed it immensely. It's pretty cool when Tony only has to taste someone's blood to know a lock combination. Hopefully the poor guy will get good enough with his ability that he'll only need to taste things... as opposed to eating whole appendages. On the upside the writers seem to have a good handle on how much they're grossing out their readers. Tony is just as disgusted by what he's eating as the readers (probably more so seeing how he's the one who's eating it). In making the readers feel a bit queasy the writer is actually allowing the readers to easily empathize with Tony. It's kind of ingenious actually - most everyone can relate to eating something awful on one level or another.


The twist at the end of this volume made me a bit sad. Ton'y partner, Mason, turns out to be a murderer. Mason has a reason for this murder but it still puts him on the wrong side of the law. I'm interested to see where this unlikely comic book goes.


Overall: B+


Interesting story with solid art... but this ick factor throws me off a bit. Even so, I definately want to keep reading.