By: John Layman (writer & letters) and Rob Guillory (art & colors)
The Story: Tony Chu comes face-to-face (?) with The Collector.
Review: I always say that Chew is the funniest comic on the stands. Most months offer several belly laughs and a ton of snicker-inducing sight gags. By Chew‘s lofty standards for humor, this was an off-issue as I only counted ONE belly-laugh and a handful of snickers. Hard to really know how to grade such an issue. On one hand, it is still funnier than anything else I’ve read this month. On the other, it was a bit of a disappointment because when I download an issue of Chew onto my iPad, I anticipate a certain level of humor and when the product is only 80% of the humor I expected, well, it’s hard not to feel a little let down.
So, the bad news is that this isn’t the strongest issue of Chew you’ll ever run across. But the enlightening thing is that the series has entered that rarified air where I’m holding it to a different standard than other comics. It might be a different type of comic book than American Vampire, The Unwritten, Punk Rock Jesus, Fashion Beast, Snyder’s Batman, etc., but it is still in the same league with those comics.
What was clever about this issue was the added insight into the Collector. We’ve seen that this dude is kinda like a vampire: He eats people with interesting food-based powers and thereby assumes the powers of those he has consumed. Thus, the Collector is a pretty powerful character. This issue gives us a run-down of many of the folks he’s eaten. Some of the powers are pretty useful, such as the power to live forever by cooking ONE recipe over-and-over or the ability to seduce anyone who shares a meal with him, but some of the powers are just silly, like the ability to string a guitar with pasta noodles.
I guess the upshot is that the humor takes a backseat to “the story” in this issue. I usually think that “the story” doesn’t really matter in Chew, but perhaps I’ll be proven wrong. Tony Chu clearly has some business to settle with the Collector. And, as readers, we want him to get even with the Collector too because we really liked Tony’s sister (who was eaten by the Collector). It’ll be interesting to see if the series can maintain the humor while also addressing this revenge storyline.
What more is there to say about Rob Guillory? The guy is just a great cartoonist. Much of the humor in the issue comes more from his cartooning and how he draws all these silly characters. The aforementioned belly-laugh was due to a splash page of a circa 1500 character who had cooked some really nasty pies (“Your recipe stinketh! Your recipe sucketh!”) and the entire room full of people who were about to barf at the taste of the pies. It’s just a whole room full of people clutching their stomachs, putting their hands over their mouth, etc. while trying not to vomit. Even the dog in the picture has green barf drooling coming from his lips. Guillory is the master of sight gags.
Conclusion: Not as funny as normal, but the plot is advanced quite a bit.
Grade: B
– Dean Stell
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