CI: Hello Mr. Layman, thank you for joining me. So Chew has been going on since 2009 and is going to come to a conclusion, in about 3 or 4 issues so can I ask, when did you first get the idea for chew and how did the comic get started? What stories helped inspire chew?

JL: Oh you know, I am not sure about that, and it sucks because I get asked this all the time. Chew was something that had been around, I had been pitching it for about 5 years before it actually happened. You know before I decided to do it myself because no one else wanted it. Officially Chew has been going on since about 2009, but I probably had it 5 or 6 years before that, so honestly I cant remember the inspiration. I just know that I pitched it a lot, no one else wanted it, and at one point I decided to just finance it myself, I didn’t think it would do well but I thought I would be able to use it to get work from other publishers. So I didn’t expect to make any money I just thought I would do it as kind of a loss later for other stuff.

CI: Well its worked out so far

JL: Oh yeah

CI: So is there any character that you’re particularly fond of?

JL: Oh yeah well my favorite was Antonell, Toni the sister and it sucks because I knew she was doomed when I introduced her so I tried to maker her as lovable as possible. And in the process I kind of fell in love with her as a character, I mean she was so much fun. And once I killed her off, I could kill anyone off.

CI: Yeah my sister and I we both fell in love with that character and we were both really heartbroken when that happened. It was just such a powerful moment.

JL: Yeah, I enjoy writing Colby a lot. You know he’s pure ID. He says it before he thinks and that’s always kind of fun. My least favorite is Savoy only because his voice is so hard to get right.

CI: How did the Chew/Revival crossover come into existence?

JL: Oh you know I just wanted to do it. Everyone else thought it was a bad idea. Rob thought it was a bad idea. The Revival guys thought it was a bad idea. And I guess out of stubbornness said I was gonna do it, and they didn’t quite get how it would work so I wrote my half almost on spec and I said “this is what I think we should do. Write your half and don’t worry about it in continuity”, you’ know you’ll write your story in your continuity and we’ll write our story in our continuity. And once it was written and everyone had gotten a look at it, it was like “Oh yeah we get it now” and Rob was into it and Seeley and Norton were into it, but I just liked the Rival book and thought it would be fun for the two books to combine. I love a good crossover.

CI: Where there any other comic you would have liked to crossover with. I noticed in the issue where Poyo travels to a different dimension he ends up in The Walking Dead, would that have been something you’d like to have explored?

JL: Well I mean Walking Dead is pretty serious. You know it works as a gag, I don’t think it would work as a comic. I would like to do, or well not anymore, Chew is pretty much over as far as I’m concerned, but I would have liked to have done Chew/Sex Criminals. I think there could have been a lot of jokes we you know body fluids and stuff like that. I also wanted to do Chew/Sixth Gun with Oni and focus on Tony’s grandfather who was a cibopath in the old west, but that books over and it becomes a little problematic when you take it to a different publisher, you got to figure out how your gonna split up the money of the trades and all that sort of stuff. Doing it at Image was real easy since Revival was an Image book so we could just take the checks and cut ‘em in half, and you know I imagine it would be the same for sex criminals. But I think the Sex Criminal guys are busy and like I said we’re just focused on getting to the end.

CI: During Chew’s long run its won several awards and was even adapted into a board game, but was there anything you ever regretted writing or wished you could go back and change?

JL: Ummmmm, no not really. Im pretty happy with the way its turned out. I mean in retrospect I maybe could have tightened up the arc from 40 to 50 but I did have 60 issues, and its and interesting question but overall Im pretty happy. I also think its not healthy to look backwards but your always worried about your next book. I know too many people who are worried about what they should have done and they’re focusing on the past instead of the future, so I try not to do that.

CI: So a while back there was talk of a Chew television show and later an animated feature based off the comic. So can you tell us if any of this hold any water?

JL: Nah, I don think so. I mean its not officially dead but I’m not holding my breath and Its moving so slow that as far as I’m concerned its dead. Like I said its not officially dead but I don’t see the cartoon as ever coming out and as for live action it took Preacher 15 years. So you know it’ll happen some day but Hollywood moves slow

CI: That’s a shame, I would have loved to have seen it.

JL: Yeah it is a shame and its frustrating but you worry about what you have control over and in my case that’s the comic.

CI: So its sad to say but Chew is coming to an end soon so without spoiling too much what can the readers expect?

JL: It’s a lot of goodbyes and there’s no many happy endings for the characters. A lot of people die and it wraps up. Every issue now that I’m writing every page is almost a good bye of sorts. So anyone who’s expecting this to tie up in a nice happy bow is goanna be disappointed.

CI: Im afraid that I gonna cry

JL: I don’t know if you will at issue 60 but you may before that.

CI: Chew is a very funny series but it also can be quite violent. From body parts getting cut off to eating a dead dog, how do you manage to keep the series from getting too dark?

JL: Well you know a lot of it is Rob’s art, which is why I wanted him or someone like him. I want to make the comic book that I want to read, and in a lot of cases if you were to have put a different artist drawing the exact same thing it would have been kind of repellent. So it helps that you got a guy doing a kind of cartoony brightly colored stuff, cause I wanted a book where you could sort of laugh at it even when your being grossed out. You like this is kind of gross but still kind of hilarious.

CI: One of Tony’s Cousins, Charlie Chu is always described as “Works at Oni Press”. Is that a reference to someone?

JL: Charlie Chu, works at Oni Press. He’s a real guy. Tony’s last name is Chu, Charlie’s last name is Chu and at one point I’m like “hey Charlie can I make you a cousin and put you in the book?” and you know its kind of a comic book inside joke, but he’s actually a dude who works in the comic industry.

CI: What’s your favorite power in chew?

JL: You know there’s been too many especially now. Like I’ve got the finish line in sight and I’ve been on this marathon and I don’t know if I could pick one.

CI: Do you have any immediate plans on what your going to work on next after Chew?

JL: No I’m actually taking a break. You know Chew has opened a lot of doors for me and I’m not a starving artist right now so I can kind of take my time and figure out what’s next. I’m doing an Aftershock book, the artist hasn’t been announced yet and I’m doing a Judge Dredd vs Alien vs Predator for Dark Horse, and I just finished a Mars Attacks for IDW. But I don’t have any new stuff lined up just yet, and Chew as I said has been such a marathon that I wouldn’t mind kick back a little and just taking a break and figuring out at my leisure what’s next. So that’s what I’m doing, just waiting to see what opportunities present themselves.

CI: Do you see yourself every coming back to Chew after issue 60 or it this really the end?

JL: It’s a pretty final ending. I could always come back and do a Chew Case files flashback kind of thing but the story and the characters, as we know it will not be the same by the end. Its nice to know that 5 or 10 years from now if Rob or I need to pay rent we can come back its certainly not something we’re planning on or counting on.

CI: Did you have the entirety of Chew planned out?

JL: Pretty much I had the ending and a lot of the main points and I always go into a story arc knowing how it ends but you know there’s enough wiggle room in the middle to be like “well I really like this character so lets focus on this one”. So I had some latitude to put the meat on the bones but the skeleton was always there.

CI: Where there any characters that you wrote that you didn’t think would be big but ended up being popular with the fans?

JL: Oh I say the biggest one was Poyo. Like Poyo was the one I never planned on. He was just sort of a gag that just sort of took off and people love Poyo so he kept appearing and his appearances got more and more outrages. But I had no idea that by the end of this there would be Poyo stuffed animals and all the other crazy stuff there is. People love Poyo

CI: Oh yeah people love Poyo

CI: So before we end is there anything you want to leave the reader about Chew and its legacy?

JL: You know Im just really grateful that we have an audience. Most books don’t last this long these days and just the fact that we made it 60 issues, a book that’s this kind of weird and not really commercial. When I first thought about Chew, everyone said don’t do it, do something with capes, that’s what sells. And I did the book that I wanted to do and the market responded. That’s still is amazing to me.

