"Chew" Starts off Strong, Crash Lands for the Finale

    Throughout the background of the entire month of May, I have had a very good friend of mine telling me that I should read Chew. He of course knows that I am just an avid of a comic reader as he is, and so he was telling me that it was worth it. There was just one issue though, the premise of the entire comic is not particularly compelling. Let me spell it out. Tony Chu is a Cibopath, long story short he is a detective who can trace the memories of anything he eats, making him very good at his job, even if eating is disgusting for him. The story follows him in a world where chicken is banned, and it's up to him to balance both his work and his life, while figuring out the mystery behind chicken prohibition. Sounds a little ridiculous doesn't it? Not the biggest pull. But for a while, it actually works, and it's great. So let's talk about it.

    One thing that Chew must be applauded on is the fact that it sticks to it's premise so religiously. The FDA is one of the most powerful government agencies that employs super-soldiers, by the end of the book there are like 30+ different food related abilities, and aliens are involved so you just kind of accept it. What I do respect about the series is that even though it acknowledges how silly/goofy it is, it sticks to it's guns in that regard. It has funny cutaway gags, usually involving Poyo, the world's greatest rooster, or sex scenes involving like John or Toni, but you never see Tony cracking some joke. To this straight laced agent who was born with an unfortunate ability, you never really see him crack or break, he takes this chicken prohibition stuff seriously. 

    And since the book is respecting itself, you as the reader have to respect it. By issue five I had no issue suspending my disbelief, watching someone who has the ability to create objects out of chocolate that can function completely as their real life counterparts. I mean sure it has it's wacky characters like John with his cybernetics, or Caesar who eventually gets a cool grab hand, but it does do a good job of fleshing out this bizarro world where chicken is banned, it doesn't just go "haha look food is funny." Chew does an excellent job of balancing out both humour and decently witty writing. It does make you as the reader also want to unravel the mysterious business of what exactly happened to this world to cause it to diverge so significantly from ours.

    The only problem is, they never resolve the story in any way that can be described as satisfying or meaningful. Frankly the comic in general has an issue with pacing by the end, not in the sense that I think the plot doesn't progress well enough, but it does a pretty bad job of building up to character deaths, or doing anything with them in general. Like with Toni, Tony's twin sister, you learn about her for about like three or four issues, and she's a fun and interesting character. Then they kill her off, oh and Tony's still sidelined. Oh and Toni gets married but she also realizes she's going to die so this all happens in the span of about one issue. Oh and do I mention she has the ability to see the future and sends a message to Tony so that he's sidelined from most of the major fights for the second half of the issue because  "Toni told me it's not the right time to beat the collector yet."

    It's not just a Toni issue too, both Tony and John get married in the same issue, and the Collector (who has been setup as the big bad in the story), is killed in a single issue after a couple issues of him "preparing for war," leading to 10 issues of epilogue. Which might seem fine at first, but this entire time there's been this whole overarching plot about aliens that relates to the whole prohibition of chicken, which you as a reader really want to know by now, and are confused at how they're going to wrap it up in 10 issues. Well, they kind of do it, they introduce about like 5 more new food related abilities, and explain that the whole conspiracy about chicken being evil was in fact actually real. Aliens exist, aliens that are chickens that blow up societies who don't stop eating chicken. And I kid you not, this series ends on the cliffhanger where an old Tony stabs a chicken alien. That's it.

Final Score: 65/100

    Chew was a good series when it started, but fizzled out hard by the end. I didn't even think the ending was that bad until they left me you on a cliffhanger. Like seriously? It just leaves a very sour taste in your mouth that's hard to get rid of. Like I still enjoyed Chew, it's short enough that I would say most people should give it a twirl, but it's really hard to get out of your mind how they just crashed and burned with this one. Next I'll be reading East of West, I'm a pretty big fan of Hickman's Avengers run so I have decently high hopes for this one. So until then.