Outer Darkness/Chew: Fusion Cuisine

Writer John Layman’s plan to jump-start interest in his current series, “Outer Darkness,” by having it crossover with his old series, “Chew,” didn’t pan out.  Which frankly sucks because the two volumes of “Outer Darkness” that we did get were pretty great.  They also left the main story pretty unresolved, so I was hoping that this crossover would offer some closure in that regard.  That absolutely does not happen as the story takes place sometime during the first two-thirds of vol. 2 as Captain Joshua Rigg has to deal with a tricky bit of space diplomacy.  He’s been asked to negotiate a trade route through the space of a species that only communicates through food.  After their current chef gets himself killed trying to do so, Rigg comes up with a Plan B:  Bringing cibopathic detective Tony Chu and his cyborg partner John Colby to the future to do the negotiating for him.

At least, that’s the story Rigg is giving his new arrivals.  The actual truth is a bit more complicated and leads to even more crossover shenanigans.  Fun shenanigans, I might add.  Despite the presence of Tony and Colby in the story, “Fusion Cuisine” fits very much in the mold of the kind of stories we were getting in “Outer Darkness.”  Which means that the crossover shenanigans are amped up with some demonic flair.  It’s all good and a reminder of what that series did well, complete with expectedly stylish art from Afu Chan, and a few welcome, scene-setting pages from Rob Guillory.  Honestly, though, it bothers me to talk about “Outer Darkness” in the past tense as that series deserved better than it got.  “Fusion Cuisine” doesn’t make me miss the series any less, but it’s still more of it.  Which is better than nothing.