Chew vol. 4: Flambe

Though the issues inside are labeled as parts of an arc called “Flambe,” this collection is not a continuous storyline.  It’s just five issues documenting more crazy weirdness in the life of Tony Chu, starting with the fallout from the writing in the sky that closed out the previous volume.  As it turns out, such an event has many people convinced that these are the “end times” and suddenly, following the government’s prohibition on poultry doesn’t seem all that important.  That doesn’t mean there’s any less work for Tony and his cyborg partner John.  It just means that their jobs are only going to get odder from here on out.

So we get to see Tony tracking down a voresophic — someone who gets smarter the more they eat — former FDA agent, resolving a food-fueled hostage situation at his daughter’s school, and teaming up with the rough-and-tumble female agents of the U.S.D.A. to stop a rogue North Korean general.  If you think that’s weird, just imagine how it gets when you bring in babies conceived in zero-G situations and mutated by solar radiation, Mason Savoy’s mind-trip, the Church of the Immaculate Ova, and Poyo, the most bad-ass fighting rooster in the world.  It’s all delivered with the customary humor and style that you’d expect from John Layman and Rob Guillory, and things flow a lot better than they did in the previous volume.  When the end comes, you really feel that they’re building towards something instead of just marking time.  It’ll be a few months before I find out what, but I’m willing to bet it’ll be worth the wait.