Grimlock ♥ Ultra Magnus

There was a humble bundle with a whole bunch of graphic novels - all from Image, I believe- and Chew was one of them.   I always thought Chew sounded a bit silly as it's about a cibopath, or someone who gets psychic impressions from what they eat.   So I wanted the others, but not this.   Primus, not this.   

Wow.   Was I wrong!   Clever satire?   Check?  Nonstop action?  Check?  Characters that I absolutely adore?  Check?   Stylized art that I didn't like at first glance but grew on me with every panel I read?   Check.   Check, check, check!  Double check, in fact.  

Tony Chu is the cibopath in question, and while he's a cop, he's going on stakeouts checking to see if anyone is buying chicken.   Yeah, chicken.  Because the avian flu killed off so many people, poultry is illegal.   In fact, the F.D.A is the most bad-ass governmental group since the avian flu is just that big and important.   If you buy into it.   Tony's brother, Chow, doesn't believe in the avian flu, and believes that the government is covering something else up, and that chicken should be legal.   He had a breakdown about this on his show - his food network show, as he is a master chef - and it went on hiatus.   

Meanwhile, when the F.D.A figures out what Tony can do, they promote him from officer to agent.   His new partner, Mason Savoy, is a large, articulate man who is also a cibopath.  However, this premise rockets the concept from silly to fantastic.   It allows for jabs at government and bureaucracy, while also giving us sympathetic character development.   And while a lot of the humor is satirical, it doesn't confine itself to pure satire.   The way that the characters - Tony, Savoy, and their boss - speak to each other is fantastically real, and hilarious to boot.  

And the art, which seemed to fit the silly premise, at first glance also turned out to be more than meets the eye.   It's deceptively simple on first glance, but it's beautiful - the lines, the simplicity that peels away to reveal a complexity that mirrors the writing.  The colors, are, likewise full of depth, atmospheric, and fit the story perfectly. 

Absolute perfection.  I'm going to see about getting more volumes of this to read in the near future.