Publisher: Image Comics

Story By: John Layman

Art By: Rob Guillory

Release Date: 5th November 2014

How can part 4 of a 5 part story arc be a good time to pick up a comic? Good question, it can’t, right?

Oh, so very wrong.

Now I like Chew very much, but have missed the last half-a-dozen issues or so. For me, I’m certainly not lost – Chew has always excelled at surreal comedy exposition. For a new reader, there’s enough that you could dive right in, despite this being an apocalyptic showdown with one of the series’ recurring villains. There’s blood, violence, and absolutely no chickens.

Wait, what?

Well this is Chew, after all – a world where Chicken is forbidden under US food laws, and superpowers are all derived from food. The main character, Tony Chu, is a Cibopath – he get psychometric readings from anything he eats (except beetroot – obviously), all the way along the food chain. This makes him an incredible detective, and along the way helps him expose a whole raft of culinary misdemeanours.

But there’s a whole host of others, quite apart from his accidentally cyborg partner, John, who have the range of food powers (I for one can’t believe it’s taken this long to get a Popeye reference in) and it has become apparent that Tony is low-grade by Cibopath measures: the other Cibopaths we’ve encountered taking the full range of powers, Sylar-style, from anything and anyone they consume. Which of course leads to all-out war using weaponised chocolate.

Chew is nuts (literally, in places). It’s hilarious, deranged and brilliant. And whilst there’s no psycho chicken of doom this issue (although technically that’s not true, he does get glorious full page spreads), it’s still the most delicious fun you can have without resorting to eating hallucinogenic fruit.

Rating 5/5.

The Writer of this piece was: Sam Graven

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