In Chew, an avian flu in the chicken population caused a worldwide pandemic leading the governments of the world to ban chickens. Now seen as a threat to human survival, the sale of chicken on the black market is an incredibly serious crime, and the FDA is now the most powerful agency in the world. The main character in Chew, Tony Chu, is an FDA detective with an extremely strange ability: his gets information from anything he eats. If he eats an animal, he can tell how it was killed; if he eats a human corpse, he can find out the same information. The only food that doesn't given him these psychic impressions is beets, so he eats a lot of beets. Chu uses his ability to hunt down black market chicken dealers and protect the public in this new series by John Layman.
Review
Of all the strange graphic novels my husband has had me read, this one may take the cake. Ok, bad choice of words there. Anyway, the concept of Chew is just weird. The author seems more bent on shock value than on story quality: take away Chu's ability and the story is mediocre at best. The book was a 2010 "Best New Series" Eisner Award nominee and has received rave reviews, but I just didn't see it. Luckily, my husband wasn't blown away by it, either, or I would be more than a little concerned about the man I married. In fact, he wanted me to read it to get my take on it, to see if he had missed something. He didn't.
References
[Cover art for Chew]. (2011). Retrieved from http://goodcomics.
comicbookresources.com/2011/07/06/committed-independent-comic-
book-gifts/
Layman, J. (2010). Chew: The omnivore edition, Vol. 1. Berkley, CA:
Image Comics.
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