Chew vol. 8: Family Recipies

In this volume you will see an astronaut shooting mobsters with lazers, a food pornographer, a police story from another planet, and protagonist Tony Chu and his partner hallucinating themselves as talking animals while they head out on a case.  So yeah, it’s business as usual for “Chew” as the series continues to deliver its brand of twistedly creative storytelling goods.  I’m also pleased to report that the storytelling upswing that began in the previous volume continues here as well.  We get some key developments regarding what Tony’s former partner Mason Savoy has planned, as well as just what those mysterious flaming symbols in the sky from back in vol. 3 actually portend.  The narrative here does lack the intensity and sheer fun of seeing our favorite cibopath take names and kick ass as he did when we last saw him, but there’s plenty of good material here to convince me that the title is still on the right track.

Best of all is that we get to see Toni one more time.  Her presence in this series was so infectiously positive and cheerful that her grisly death now seems inevitable in retrospect.  Yet with this volume we get that “one last adventure” with her to finally let her go.  Writer John Layman really plays up her presence for all it’s worth, using her initial appearance to subvert one of Tony’s cibopathic visions along with her whole cibovoyancy schtick that allows her to carry on conversations with her brother from beyond the grave and troll him utterly about future events.  This is all drawn brilliantly, as always, by artist Rob Guillory meets the writer every step of the way and shows that he can render the strangest and most outlandish things with comedic glee.  With this volume, “Chew” is now two-thirds of the way through its planned sixty-issue run and its last third is looking like it’ll be just as fun as what has come before.