Broken Frontier

Meet Officer Tony Chu and his partner, John Colby.  Regular cops busy with stakeouts and having jurisdiction problems.  Sounds run of the mill.  Now, what if I told you their jurisdictional problems aren’t with the FBI, but with the FDA, because chicken is now illegal - interested yet?  No? Well, there’s Chu then.  He is cibopathic, meaning that when he bites into something, he knows the life story of the ingredients.  When he runs into a soup made by a serial killer, his whole world changes.

Image has finally managed the impossible.  It has finally lived down the sins of the Nineties.  Gone are meaningless art books with random dialogue.  Instead, Image has become the Miramax of comics.  It is the small little indie minded company that appears to be a goliath.  With the quality work coming from the Man of Action Studios, the work of Kirkman, and Larsen even finding his stride again in Savage Dragon, Image produces some of the best comics on the stands today.  What is even more remarkable is that like Vertigo, it has done this all by taking on quirky odd titles that the big boys wouldn’t touch.

This is where Chew fits in.  Its creators were inspired by Kirkman’s Jerry Maguire-esque manifesto from last year.  You know, the big “we are doing this wrong" speech.  Say what you will about his motivation or ulterior motives, he inspired Layman and Guillory to give up the work for hire scene and take on a smaller, intimate, and ultimately riskier project.

Chew has many tropes of every buddy cop movie ever made.  I mention them in the opening paragraph.  There are many more, like when Chu has to come to terms with the fact that his brother may be a criminal, or his big mouthed boss itching to bust him, or the informant who can’t be touched because of a deal with the feds.  All of this distracts the reader with a familiarity.  The book is almost comfortable in the particulars.

There are three things that make this book stand out.  The first is the details.  The very first page is a prologue which sets up the big reveal later.  It is a seemingly random bit of information at first.  Oddly out of place with the police procedural that follows, but this making of the soup is a key to understanding exactly how Chu’s powers work.  There is also the back story of Chu’s brother, a celebrity Chef turned underground deviant for losing it on television, letting the world know that chicken is good and the laws making it contraband are a bunch of bull.  Deftly, Layman is giving us the tools we need to understand how everything works.  There is no wasted panel or dialogue.

Second, there is the concept itself.  Chu is a different kind of cop.  Sure, he is by the book and lets his heart ultimately rule his decisions, but there is his power.  The idea of a chicken speakeasy.  The relevance of the bird flu mentions.  All of these make for a special story that comes out of what appears to be a normal run of the mill plot we have seen a million times.  That is where the true genius ideas come from, springing from the rote and blossoming into something new.

Finally, there is Guillory’s art.  He has a distinct cartoony style. The designs have a bit of whimsy to them and they make for a perfect complement to the fantastical nature of the story.  The real trick here is how easily the same comical designs make for dark and creepy complements to the corresponding elements of the script.  It is a line not often walked.

Beyond just the genius of the art’s ability to be all things at once, there is the big reveal when Chu eats the soup which results in the most magnificent splash page of the year.  One little picture tells a million words and the reader is taken aback.  It is remarkable and shows a promise for great things to come.

Chew is the debut of the year.  Like Proof before it, it is instantly classic.  Creepy and riotously funny, this is something special.