Chew #28

Written by John Layman
Art by Rob Guillory

There's nothing quite so satisfying as a new issue of Chew.  It's been a while since we've checked in with Tony and his crew - there was the Agent Poyo one-shot, and before that the second printing of issue 27, which was first released out of sequence over a year ago, and so issue 26 feels like it was a long time ago.

In this issue, Tony Chu is still in the hospital, although he has regained consciousness, even if he still needs high doses of pain medication to stay awake.  And whatever medication he's on, it causes him to see people as talking animals, which is always fun.

Anyway, Tony is needed by his former partners Colby and Caesar, who have come to him for help with their latest case, despite their each being from a rival agency.  It would seem that a scientist has learned how to weaponize meat, creating cows that spontaneously and explosively combust when they begin to decompose.  The terrorist group EGG have used this meat to bomb a fashion show wherein the models walk the runway in clothing made out of food, so both the FDA and the USDA are determined to put a stop to EGG and the scientist's mad science.

Only in Chew would this be a viable plot, and that is what makes this comic so great.  It revels in its own weirdness, as it feels like Layman and Guillory constantly challenge each other to come up with something wilder each issue.

This issue is as good as this series gets.  We learn why Tony's sister Toni is familiar to Caesar, Poyo gets to be Poyo (he's one of the greatest comics characters of the 21st Century - he's the cyborg rooster on the cover, if you didn't know), and Guillory fills each page with sight gags in addition to telling a great story.

To top it off, there is a preview of the upcoming series Great Pacific, which looks very good.